Integration Services and BizTalk: Similarities, Differences

Many Integration Services terms and concepts mirror those of BizTalk Server 2004. At a high level, Integration Services and BizTalk seem to support similar functions—both products can accept data from a variety of sources and in a range of formats, convert those data to a common format, perform a set of prescribed operations on those data, and then move the results to new destinations. However, the technologies are not really suited, or optimized, for the same tasks.

Similar Terms and Concepts

Both Integration Services and BizTalk Server provide data adapters to connect to a variety of data sources and output destinations, and a data processing engine for intermediate processing. Each contains what is effectively a workflow engine—control-flows dictate the steps and sequence of Integration Services processes; orchestrations guide the steps and sequence of BizTalk processes.

Both also provide Visual Studio-based development environments that allow workflow and data-processing steps to be programmed and configured using similar graphical design tools, and both provide APIs for extending their base sets of data adapters and data processing capabilities.