BizTalk 2009 and ESB 2.0 Now Available for Public Beta

Some of the key enhancements to BizTalk 2009 is support for the latest Microsoft offerings (including Windows 2008, Visual Studios 2008 SP1, .Net 3.5 SP1, SQL 2008, and TFS), support for RFID Mobile, and new LOB Adapters (including a new SQL Adapter).

A new release of the Enterprise Service Bus Guidance is available on CodePlex (http://www.codeplex.com/esb).

Wow.. seem that we are going to enojoy biztalking :D

New BizTalk Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) Guidance

BizTalk Server Team Blog post this guidance, If you are looking into implementing a BAM solution using the BizTalk Server infrastructure I strongly recommend reading this paper and testing the sample code provided with it. The online version is available on MSDN, however for the full Word version and sample code you may want to download it.

Do you want high throughput?

The combination of BizTalk Server 2006 and SQL Server 2005 running on a Windows Server 2003 platform offers the industry’s best mission-critical functionality and availability, and achieves very high levels of performance. This document presents a customer that achieved unprecedented performance, scalability, flexibility and cost-effectiveness for a business-critical application within a large financial institution.

download from here 

BizTalk Server 2009 Beta Availability and beyond

The first public beta release of BizTalk Server 2009 is now available for download at http://connect.microsoft.com.
Some of the major themes of this version are the enhanced developer productivity and the significantly improved developer team experience through the integration with Microsoft’s application life-cycle management (ALM) solution: Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation Server.
For more details, please refer to the press release.

Check this article  by David Worthington describes the main facntinality of Biztalk 2009

Due to Muslims around Gaza

At least 632 Palestinians, including women and children, have been killed in an Israeli aerial bombardment on Hamas security installations.
Emergency services said that at least 2845 people had been wounded.
we call on imams, speakers, journalists, poets, writers, and literary authors to enrich the religious, cultural, and media pulpits with resistance literature and to send out a message of hope that the more ferocious events get, the more hope we lay on Allah who promised to exterminate the tyrants and grant victory to the believers and Who made it a duty on Him in His grandeur saying in the Qur'an: {وَكَانَ حَقّاً عَلَيْنَا نَصْرُ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ} Transliteration: Wa Kāna Ĥaqqāan `Alaynā Naşru Al-Mu'uminīna[and it was due (to them) upon Us to help the believers.] [Ar-Rum 30:47].
:: This Is a Message for Humankind ::
:: Did you know ? ::
:: The situation of the Muslims in Palestine ::
:: What can we do about the slaughter of Muslims in Palestine and around the world? ::
:: For more news ::

Microsoft BizTalk Server Performance Optimization Guide

Microsoft published  this guide to provide in depth information for optimizing the performance of a BizTalk Server solution. Full end-to-end performance testing is frequently overlooked during enterprise application deployment. Knowing that Microsoft has built a scalable messaging infrastructure, many organizations that use BizTalk Server spend little or no time conducting performance testing of their own applications. BizTalk Server applications consist of many parts, which may include custom-built components as well as those provided by Microsoft. It is impossible for Microsoft to performance test every possible combination of these components. Therefore, fully and properly conducting a performance test of your application is a critical step of any deployment. The purpose of this guide is to consolidate and provide prescriptive guidance on the best practices and techniques that should be followed to optimize BizTalk Server performance.
Check this guide and follow the right steps to optimize your solution:

Microsoft talks BizTalk 2009 and beyond

Microsoft is preparing a major release of BizTalk Server that will take advantage of functionality added to the company’s application platform stack since BizTalk Server 2003 R2 shipped.BizTalk Server 2009 will become generally available in the first half of 2009, said Burley Kawasaki, director of product management in the Connected Systems Division at Microsoft, and a Community Technology Preview will be release before the end of this year.Application platform support will be extended to the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1, SQL Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and Windows Server 2008. BizTalk Server will take advantage of failover clustering features from Windows Server and will support Hyper-V, Microsoft’s hypervisor.Integration with Visual Studio Team Foundation Server adds ALM functions such as automated builds, bug tracking, source controls and multi-party development. The underlying BizTalk project system for Visual Studio will also be improved, the company says.The new features require Visual Studio 2008, said Kawasaki. “A lot of integration[s] we are doing builds on top of 2008 wave,” he added. What’s more, BizTalk will have out-of-the-box Business Activity Monitoring capabilities with SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services, as well as supporting Unified Dimensional Model cubes and real-time aggregations that are used in Microsoft’s PerformancePoint Server 2007 business intelligence product.“I believe the planned improvements that will become available in [BizTalk Server 2009] signal Microsoft's continuing intent to make this product a leading solution in the integration space, while ensuring that it's development is synchronized with other major initiatives inside of Microsoft. That's a good strategy,” said Ken Vollmer, a principal analyst for Forrester Research.Outside of the Microsoft stack and beyond the firewall, the 2009 release is slated to have a UDDI 3.0 registry that will provide for extended discovery services, registry affiliation, a subscription API and support for digital certificates for authentication.For business-to-business integrations, Microsoft is broadening its support for AS2 and EDI data sharing protocols. New capabilities will include support for multiple message attachments, configurable auto message resend and file name preservation.BizTalk Server 2009 updates all business rules and message schemas for compliance with the SWIFTReady Financial EAI Gold certification, increasing functionality as a result.The company also vows to offer broader guidance for applying Enterprise Service Bus usage patterns and other tasks.Inside the firewall, BizTalk will include implementations of more recent versions of CICS, CICS HTPP Transport, DB2, DB2/400, DB2 Universal Database, IMS and WebSphere MQ, according to Kawasaki.In addition, the company is developing a Line of Business Adapter for Oracle E-Business Suites and SQL Server, as well as improving its existing set of adapters, said Kawasaki. Adapters are available for MySAP ERP, Oracle Database and Siebel CRM business applications.The company is also updating BizTalk’s RFID standards support to adhere to industry standards, including LLRP, TDS, TDT and WS Discovery. Another standard, EPCIS, will not be fully implemented.Customers should expect a follow-up release within two years, Kawasaki noted. Microsoft will continue to update BizTalk to remain aligned with its application platform, he said. In the release beyond BizTalk 2009, Microsoft intends to collaborate with its research division to develop productivity enhancements like complex mapping, said Kawasaki. Other features will includes complex trading partner management, low-latency messaging enhancements and additional ESB guidance.Another goal is to extend the reach of BizTalk’s enterprise asset tracking to portable devices and laptops by leveraging its existing RFID platform.Customers will also be able to utilize its “Oslo” wave of modeling tools to create composite applications. Services exposed through Windows Communication Foundation by previous versions of BizTalk may also be used with Oslo modeling technologies, said Kawasaki.