The BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.1 – has been released. It is a collection of tools and libraries that extend BizTalk Server 2010 capabilities of supporting a loosely coupled and dynamic messaging architecture. It functions as middleware that provides tools for rapid mediation between services and their consumers. Enabling maximum flexibility at run time, the BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.1 simplifies the loosely coupled composition of service endpoints and management of service interactions.
The BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.1 provides key building blocks that are required for implementing a comprehensive SOI including:
- Endpoint run-time discovery and virtualization. The service consumer does not need to be aware of the service provider location and endpoint details; a new or modified service provider can be added to the ESB, without interruptions to the service consumer.
- Loosely coupled service composition. The service provider and service consumer do not need to be aware of service interaction style.
- Dynamic message transformation and translation. The mapping definition between distinct message structure and semantics is resolved at run time.
- Dynamic routing. Run-time content-based, itinerary-based, or context-based message routing.
- Centralized exception management. Exception management framework, services, and infrastructure elements that make it possible to create, repair, resubmit and compensate fault messages that service consumers or BizTalk components submit.
- Quality of service. An asynchronous publish/subscribe engine resolves different levels of service availability and provides high availability, scalability, and message traceability for ESB implementations.
- Protocol transformation. Providing the ability for service provider and service consumer to interact via different protocols including WS-* standards for Web Services. For example, a service provider can send an HTTP Web Service request, which will result in sending a message via Message Queuing.
- Extensibility. Provides multiple extensibility points to extend functionality for endpoint discovery, message routing, and additional BizTalk Server adapters for runtime and design time.
What’s New in BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.1?
The Microsoft BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.1 extends the capabilities of BizTalk Server 2010. The following list summarizes the additional support extended in Microsoft BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.1:
- Support for Visual Studio 2010 Visualization and Modeling SDK for the Itinerary Designer.
- Support for both .NET Framework version 4 and .NET Framework 3.5.
- Support for itineraries developed in BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0.
- Support for copying and pasting itinerary shapes in the Itinerary Designer