Chapter 10 -- BizTalk System Requirements

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Chapter 10

A BizTalk server is the software that reads and processes BizTalk documents. Since the BizTalk Framework is a self-describing structure that uses XML syntax, an application that acts as a BizTalk server needs to understand XML—in other words, the server must have the ability to load an XML document and access its contents. That ability is really the only basic requirement of a BizTalk server. Of course, a server that can only load and access an XML document would not be of much use in an enterprise computing environment. The BizTalk Framework 2.0 Document and Message Specification calls the software that performs these basic tasks a BizTalk Framework Compliant server, or BFC server.

In this chapter, I mention many requirements that you might want to look for when you are selecting or building a BizTalk server for your environment. If you use my basic definition, you can see that a BizTalk server can be as simple as a filter that reads a BizTalk document, looks for particular pieces of information in the package, and sends that information—in pieces or as an entire document—to the appropriate application. Or a BizTalk server can be as sophisticated as a critical component in an integrated supply-chain management system. A BizTalk server can be the application around which an entire enterprise does business with its trading partners.

You can write a BizTalk server to run on any operating system platform and in any computer language that can invoke an XML processing application. A BizTalk server can run on any operating system, including Microsoft Windows and UNIX and can be written in platform-independent languages such as Java, Python, or OmniMark.

Your BizTalk server should be flexible enough to adapt to changing requirements in a dynamic business environment, have a sophisticated interface that allows it to coexist with and drive legacy applications, and be owned by your business users, who will operate it on a day-by-day basis. Your BizTalk server should allow for cross-platform and cross-language interactions, because not everyone uses the same systems. In this chapter, we'll review the necessary features of your BizTalk server. In Chapter 11, we'll look at examples of some of these features.



XML and SOAP Programming for BizTalk Servers
XML and SOAP Programming for BizTalk(TM) Servers (DV-MPS Programming)
ISBN: 0735611262
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2000
Pages: 150

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