It is not the first time people have addressed me with these types of questions:
- I’ve been working with BizTalk for around x amount of years and am planning to learn Azure Integration Services. Which tool is best for that—Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code?
- I’m learning or starting to work with Logic Apps. Which developer tool should I focus on/invest in?
- I’m a BizTalk developer, and I’m afraid that BizTalk is going away or my company decide to move to Azure. What do you recommend I learn, and what tools should I use?
- Or, I’m a BizTalk developer, but what should I learn to grow my professional career?
So, I thought it would be a great topic to cover here on my blog as a Friday Fact. It doesn’t matter if you are a BizTalk developer or an Azure Integration Services developer; that means you are an Enterprise Integration developer, which is a fact! In my personal opinion, I believe you will be a better Enterprise Integration developer if you know both of these technologies.
What should I learn?
Now, focus on the BizTalk Server developer perspective. As a BizTalk developer, transitioning toward Azure can open up many new opportunities and align your skills with the latest integration technologies. Microsoft has been encouraging cloud-based and hybrid solutions for integration, so here are some key areas to focus on, not only on Logic Apps or Azure Functions but in all services that compose the Azure Integration Services. That means:
- Azure Logic Apps: A serverless workflow engine that allows you to build and run automated workflows integrating your apps, data, services, and systems.
- Azure Service Bus: A reliable cloud messaging service for asynchronous communication between services and applications.
- Azure Event Grid: Enables event-based architectures by routing events from sources to subscribers.
- Azure API Management: Allows you to publish, manage, secure, and analyze APIs.
- Azure Functions: A serverless compute service that enables you to run event-driven code to process data, integrate systems, and build simple APIs.
What tools should I use?
As a BizTalk developer, you are used to and familiar with using a single tool to develop your BizTalk applications: Visual Studio. Each version of BizTalk Server uses a specific version of Visual Studio; for example, BizTalk Server 2020 uses Visual Studio 2019. Now, if you’re working or starting to work with Azure Integration Services (AIS), it is not a question of whether you should use Visual Studio Code or Visual Studio or whether you should invest your time using/learning VS Code.
An AIS developer needs to use a set of tools that can help him design, develop, deploy, and manage his integrations efficiently. Here’s a list of tools you need to use:
- Azure Portal: Yes, Azure Portal is also a developer tool, and you can develop your code there for all services. It is not ideal for a production application but very effective for proof-of-concepts.
- Visual Studio 2019: Develop and deploy Logic Apps Consumption. It is the only IDE that fully supports Logic App Consumption development. But also to use the Azure Logic Apps Enterprise Integration Tools and add-in for the Integration Account project to support XML Schema creation, XML transform designer, and Flat File Schema generation.
- Visual Studio 2022: To develop Azure Functions with full debugging and deployment capabilities. And terraform or bicep projects for API Management, Storage Account or Service Bus.
- Visual Studio Code: Develop and deploy Logic Apps Standard. It is the only IDE that fully supports Logic App Consumption development. But you also can use the IDE for developing:
- Azure Functions with full debugging and deployment capabilities.
- And terraform or bicep projects for API Management, Storage Account or Service Bus.
- Azure Pricing calculator: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/calculator/ – It is important for a developer to understand costs in Azure because that will directly affect how you will implement your applications.
But there are many more, for example:
- Postman: for testing HTTP endpoints in Logic Apps, API Management, and Azure Functions. Useful for validating API integrations and testing workflows in AIS.
- Azure Storage Explorer: Helpful for viewing and managing message data if using Azure Storage Queues with Logic Apps or Functions. Also useful for inspecting blob storage if used for AIS workflows.
- Azure Service Bus Explorer: Useful for testing and managing Service Bus messages within your integrations. Available as both a standalone tool and a Visual Studio Code extension.
What other skills should I have?
There are several additional skills that will help you build, deploy, and manage robust integrations on Azure Integration Services. For example:
- Starting with the foundational skills: It is essential to be familiar with basic cloud concepts, such as subscriptions, tags, scalability, elasticity, redundancy, and cost management. You should also have a foundational knowledge of Azure’s ecosystem, particularly networking, storage, computing, and security basics.
- Programming and Scripting Skills:
- C# and .NET Core: Useful for custom logic in Azure Functions and extending Logic Apps.
- PowerShell or Azure CLI: Useful for automating Azure resource management, which is invaluable for DevOps and deployment tasks
- DevOps and CI/CD Practices are imperative!
- Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD): Set up CI/CD pipelines for deploying AIS components with Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, or similar tools.
- Bicep and/or Terraform: You may associate Bicep or Terraform with Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) deployment, ensuring consistent deployments and version control of configurations. However, you need to use these languages to consistently deploy certain services or components of your solution, such as Service Bus Queues, Topics, Subscriptions, and Access policies. Or Storage Account Containers or even APIs inside API Management.
- And finally, Azure Monitor and Application Insights. They monitor tools for logging, metrics, and diagnostics across Azure resources.
To lazy to read? We’ve got you covered! Check out our video version of this content!
I hope I have helped answer these types of questions and helped you guys define your learning path. If you liked the content or found it helpful and want to help me write more content, you can buy (or help buy) my son a Star Wars Lego!
