Introduction to BizTalk solutions architectures.
Almost all IT professionals are familiar with the benefits Service Oriented Architecture (‘SOA’) approach is offering, therefore the term ‘ESB’ is not a buzz word any more.
As a BizTalk developer the architecture you often use is known as ‘Hub-And-Spoke’. This means we’re using BizTalk as a middleware application (known as a ‘Broker’) between of all other applications. When app A needs to interact with app B, it will submit the request to the broker application. The broker then will make the preparations needed to redirect the request to app B (one example is transformation) and then route the message into app B and vice versa.
Enterprise Service Bus ('ESB') extend of the traditional EAI and MOM broker with some capabilities like:
- Web Service standards
- Integration with rang of protocols and technologies.
- metadata registry
As a rule of thumb, ESB is the gate into the ‘SOA’ world.
It means you don’t develop ‘Application’ anymore; from now on it is about ‘Services’.
If you’re new with ‘SOA’ you can learn about it here.Also, you can find an overview of BizTalk Server based 'ESB' here.
Now, because of BizTalk ‘Hub-And-Spoke’ nature, developing ESB solution based on BizTalk Server require massive development of infrastructures, The ESB guidance is Microsoft way of achieving it in the fastest way by integrating and relaying on common Microsoft technologies.
