Introduction to BizTalk

A brief description of the BizTalk essentials

What is BizTalk server?

• Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) and Business-to-Business (B2B) Integration

• Web-based development and execution environment: Loosely-coupled, long running business

processes Standard gateway to send/receive

documents Services to ensure data integrity,

delivery, security

BizTalk Server – High-Level Architecture

BizTalk Server – High-Level Architecture• BizTalk Server Engine

Messaging Engine (has Adapters for different kinds of communication)

Support for Orchestrations (graphically-designed processes)• Business Rules Engine

Abstracts business logic from the code Business Rule Composer (for non-technical users) – define policies

(group multiple rules) Vocabularies – enable developers to map business names to

underlying data• Monitoring Components

Business Activity Monitoring for running processes – info is displayed in business terms

More info on Business Activity Monitoring: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa561137(v=BTS.10). aspx

BizTalk Messaging Engine

BizTalk Messaging Engine• Messages are received via a Receive Adapter (offers different

communication mechanisms to acquire messages - call a Web Service, read a file, etc…) and then processed via a Receive Pipeline (e.g. convert message to XML) then delivered to a DB-based Message Box.

• Orchestrations hold the logic behind business processes (not written in code but graphically designed with organized shapes – conditions, loops, etc…) and can use the Business Rules Engine (a simpler way to express complex sets of rules used in a business process).

• Orchestrations create subscriptions to indicate the type of messages they expect. Messages that arrive in the Message Box are dispatched to appropriate orchestrations. Orchestration usually sends a message back in Message Box upon completion.

• The outbound message is processed by a Send Pipeline (converted from internal XML) and delivered through a Send Adapter to the target (e.g. saved file, Web Service call, …).

More details on Sending / Receiving Messages, Adapters, Pipelines, Subscriptions: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa560031(v=BTS.10).aspx

More details on Schemas, Mappings, Orchestrations, Business Rules Engine: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa561630(v=BTS.10).aspx

Quick Glossary

Host: logical representation of a runtime process (adapters & orchestrations); can have multiple instances on different servers (and a server can have multiple hosts); can run in-process (win service) or isolated (non-BizTalk process – e.g. ASP.NET worker)

Adapter: connectivity to the outside world (usually in charge of transport, data agnostic, on the receive end, in charge of listening / pooling endpoint).

Pipeline: data processing & validations (normalize/denormalize data to/from XML – Note: BizTalk does not always require XML)

Quick Glossary

Subscription: a set of conditions, representing the interest of an orchestration for a certain message (data from the message is written in the context and evaluated against subscriptions to determine routing)

Message Box: implemented as a SQL database; publish/subscribe design (in case of multiple subscribers each receives a copy of the message)

Message Agent: receives the message (once it has passed thru an Adapter & Pipeline), writes properties in the Message Box DB (e.g. MessageType), finds subscriptions (SP call), inserts message (SP call, subsequent calls in case of multiparts), adds reference to host instance queue.

Quick Glossary

Orchestration: implementation of the business processes with a graphical shape-based designer (drag’n’drop); can be invoked by a new message or by another orchestration

Orchestration Engine: manages stateless execution of orchestrations; on wait/delay stages it can dehydrate orchestrations (serialize orchestration state to the MessageBox and remove from memory) and rehydrate them (reverse process) as needed

Business Activity Monitoring: visibility into the processing within business solutions; uses terms that any data consumer can use; based on a wish list and a DB infrastructure for instrumentation data, a Tracking Profile can be generated (deployable at runtime); data is available within a BAM Portal (or accessible on SQL server via SQL Reports, queries, etc…).

Rules Engine: abstract business logic from code, allow changes & control for business owners

Development Roles

Business analyst: define rules & behavior for a business process, define process flow (what info is sent to each app, mapping between business documents)

Developer: create BizTalk application that implements the above – define XML schemas, specify detailed mappings, create orchestrations

Administrator: set up communication / endpoints, deploy BizTalk application

Thank you!

Stay tuned for the next slideshow in the BizTalk Series!