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BizTalk Scenarios - Real-life samples in the box

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One of the really cool new features of BizTalk Server 2006 is that it contains large sample scenarios that illustrate how BizTalk can be used to build solutions. These are fully working implementations that showcase how different parts of BizTalk can be used. When you open BizTalk Server Documentation these scenarios are listed on the start page. The are described as: "Information about designing, building, and running three complete, model BizTalk Server solutions: a service oriented solution, a business process management solution, and a business-to-business solution."

Even though they are quite heavily advertised in the documentation they are not that well known to many developers. Some people have never heard of the scenarios while other have heard of them but simply dismissed them as just another sample. Let's be clear on the last issue, these scenarios are not just another sample they are something much better than that. The scenarios are real implementation and does not limit themselves to a small and uncomplicated scope. The problem with the scenarios may even be that they are too real-life, there is a lack of focus on a specific issue which is often present in normal documentation and samples. But hey, that is what it’s like out there in the real world…

My interest in these patterns started when I during two weeks had the opportunity to work with the product group in Redmond that has built the scenarios. Then in January I had to dive deep into some parts of the Business Process Management (BPM) scenario when I made a presentation about BizTalk patterns at an internal conference.

The problem with the scenarios, which might frighten some people who start digging into the details (I know it frightens me!), is that they are so large. Being so large one would like them to be well-documented to enable one to understand how the work, but this is not the case! I'm not saying that there aren't any documentation (there are plenty of that which can be viewed at https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/BTS06ConceptsPlanning/html/f6239905-a1bf-4223-bdca-6677f2d6049b.asp), but to me there is no overall architecture and design documented. All the patterns that are mentioned in the docs simply become a blur and it's hard to identify exactly which pattern matches which code.

As a developer working with BizTalk I consider these scenarios to be more than large samples, they are pointers that show how the product group in Redmond intends us to use BizTalk to solve business problems. Therefore I have decided to dive into these scenarios and highlight design and implementation patterns that I consider useful.

Over the coming weeks and months I intend to post about the result of my examinations. First up is about how to use BizTalk Single-Sign On (SSO) to store configuration information for your application (which kind of conflicts with by previous post about using the utility class configurationHelper :-).

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