What's new in BizTalk 2010

Recently I've been to a seminar on the new features of BizTalk 2010.
I like to share a brief summary of all new features in BizTalk 2010 that I've discovered on this seminar.

Platform Support

All latest Microsoft developments are supported.

·      Visual Studio 2010

·         Virtualization support for Hyper-V

·         SQL Server 2008 R2

·         Windows Server 2008 R2

·         SharePoint 2010

·         Windows 7

·         .NET Framework 4.0

BizTalk mapper

The BizTalk mapper is improved dramatically in this latest version, which makes the life of developers a lot easier. Productivity when designing new maps will increase with the more intelligent BizTalk mapper .

These are the added features for the BizTalk mapper:

·       Search functionality: it is now possible to search in your map, even inside the functoids

·         Cut / copy / paste / move / undo functions, makes it all easier to design maps

·         Improved support for documenting maps and readability

·         Predictive match: match all underlying nodes based on for example matching names

·         Some functionality to increase the readability when highlighting a functoid or a binding:

o   Highlight propagation

o   Auto-scrolling: scrolls your schema’s to the right spot

o   Coalescing sibling nodes: all unused nodes of the schema’s will collapse

Dashboard

A whole new settings dashboard consolidates all settings into a single place. These settings are used to tune your BizTalk environment to your needs.
All settings are now granular, so you can change your settings at different levels. You can change all settings on three different levels, namely on group, host or host instance.
There’s also support for automated settings deployment, which allows you to deploy your settings on all environments using scriptable import / export operations.
And last but definitely not the least is the improved admin concole.

System Center (SCOM)

This System Center Operation Manager  is used for monitoring and diagnose your BizTalk Environment. The SCOM has a new model with separate application and deployment views. They’ve also added new alerts and diagnostics for better monitoring the environment.
The SCOM can be also be used for clustered servers.
All these functionality contribute to an improved machine monitoring.

Adapters

BizTalk 2010 brings along a serie of new and enhanced adapters. They even provide a higher level of security and secure a better performance.
important adapter updates:

·         FTP adapter:

o   Added support for secure FTP with a new FTPS adapter and an improved FTP adapter

o   Possibility for read-only files: it will redownload when a file is changed

o   Atomic file transfer now also in ASCII mode

ESB Toolkit

The ESB toolkit already existed for previouses BizTalk versions, different is in BTS 2010 it gets installed along with BizTalk.
The BizTalk ESB Toolkit is a collection of tools and libraries that extend BizTalk Server capabilities of supporting a loosely coupled and dynamic messaging architectur
An Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is an architectural pattern and a key enabler in implementing the infrastructure for a service-oriented architecture (SOA). It addresses integration problems in a way that maximizes the re-use of services and maintains flexibility.

This ESB toolkit is an abstraction layer on top of BTS, which brings several advantages, like:

·         Easier to redeploy

·         Reduces your necessary ports, which makes it all easier to manage

·         Faster response to changes

·         Higher level of reusability

·         High extensibility for future or special needs

For further info on the ESB toolkit I suggest this URL: http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/en/us/esb-guidance.aspx

New trading partner model

You ‘ll probably know the old trading partner model (‘parties’ in the admin console), where you were able to configure the AS2, Edifact or X12 settings for a certain Customer. However this old trading partner model had a non-intuitive representation, where you had to make a new party for every new agreement.
The new trading partner model brings some new possibilities. It reflects typical B2B relationships and is easier to manage large scale TPM deployments. Each party can now possess several so called business profiles. Agreements have to be made between these  Business Profiles. Every agreement also have the possibility to manage an agreement lifecycle. Furthermore, you’ll have more control over the message types in the new partner model.

Thes changes contribute to following advantages:

·         Settings are more visible (improved UI)

·         Improved productivity(agreement protocols + protocol settings)

AppFabric

BizTalk Server 2010 includes easy to use tools that integrate Line-of-Business applications with Windows Server AppFabric Workflows.  This includes Workflow activities that provide access to the BizTalk Transformation Engine and Mapper, and the BizTalk Line-of-Business adapters.

Removed features

Some features are removed and replaced by new features in BizTalk Server 2010.

·         BizTalk Web Services Publishing Wizard: The BizTalk WCF Publishing Wizard can be used to publish Web services from BizTalk.  The BizTalk Web Services Publishing Wizard has been removed

·         Legacy adapters: they are replaced by the adapters in the BizTalk Adapter Pack (SQL, Oracle, Siebel, mySAP)

·         EDI pipeline and Context Properties:  The new Trading Partner Management feature in BizTalk Server 2010 provides the same capabilities as the EDI Pipeline and Context Properties and replaces these features

BTS 2010 upgrade path

They’ve added a new smart setup which scans and installs BizTalk upgrades automatically. You can upgrade from BizTalk Server 2006 R2 and BizTalk Server 2009.

All these new features make me really look forward to working with BizTalk 2010!