BizTalk Server Reviews

The solution runs on-premise. It is a good middleware product that Microsoft has developed. It is used by the manufacturing, oil, and gas industries, as well as many other platforms. Many other products have evolved in the market, but BizTalk is still standing because of its performance. It is capable of pushing a maximum volume of data from a source system to a target system. It has a good capacity.

The AS2 communication protocol is one of the most advanced processes. It enables a handshake with the source and target systems using certificates. It is the most secure way of communicating between two systems. It is an advantage. We can do a lot of message routing. If we want to handle large data, we can put the data into different patterns to process it. We can do it through sequential convoy or parallel convoy orchestration.

BizTalk comes with SQL Server. We can load temporary data in the database and use the batch process from BizTalk. It is an added advantage. Creating agreements is a manual job, but it's quite easy in BizTalk. Even a fresh college graduate can configure AS2 certificates and partner profiles and communicate with other systems. It is easy.

BizTalk Server is used to connect between two systems. If you have one system as the source and another as the destination, it acts as a bridge. You can do transformations – the source system can send in a different format, and you can convert that schema into the destination schema. You can do transformation, and you can use orchestrations. There are a number of features in BizTalk.

We can use it for multiple purposes, mainly for messaging – to transfer messages from one location to another. We have various supports, send ports, receive ports, and other use cases as well. If you have conditions, you can use the Business Rules Engine (BRE). For tracking purposes, you can use Business Activity Monitoring (BAM).

There are so many databases involved because BizTalk stores all messages in the MessageBox DB, along with your Management DB and Tracking DB. In the Admin Portal, you can track messages. 

If there are any failures due to network issues, okay, you can go to that step and resume the instance. From that step, it will continue. If the destination system is up, then it will go and create the record. You have so many adapters as well: File adapter, HTTP, basic web HTTP, SFTP, FTP adapter... the list goes on.

The most valuable feature is its reliability and stability. The first version of BizTalk was released in 2000, and many companies still use it. It was stable until 2013 when we had support. 

In the 2016 version, they gave the option to connect to Azure Logic Apps and adapters. And in the 2020 version, we have direct connectivity with Azure AD. We have so many virtual tools... There are competitors now, such as MuleSoft, which is owned by Salesforce. However, as a Microsoft admin, I have a strong preference for BizTalk.

It is easy for a beginner to learn BizTalk. I was trained in .NET technology, then I gradually learned BizTalk on my own. You can install VMware and get the community version of BizTalk to practice and do POCs [Proofs of Concept]. The development environment lets you use the admin console and test everything, so it's easy to see if BizTalk is a good fit. If you want to learn BizTalk for the first time, you can definitely do it.

Recently, I migrated BizTalk applications into the Azure integration site, including Logic Apps, repair management, and some files. I implemented all of the DevOps setups, so I'm aware of BizTalk pipelines and development.

If you're a client, you can use BizTalk as middleware. For instance, you can treat SalesForce as a destination if you want to communicate IDOCs to SalesForce subjects. In that case, BizTalk will be the middleware and will do the data transformation in the mapping or orchestration. If you want to use any policies or data transformations, you can implement it in the mapping level and implement some policies. 

We can apply some mapping and policies in BizTalk, like BAM policies or BRE policies. We can do all kinds of data resolution. The SalesForce objects will accept the same kind of format, and we can develop and do the data transformation in the same way. We can do the mapping and convert the data from the data center into XML.

I used the 2016 version of BizTalk. The solution is deployed on-premises.

The number of users is limited. We're able to restrict users. We created a security group and gave access to four to five members, so only those people can use the particular server.

The most valuable feature of BizTalk Server is that it will turn XML into flexible transactions.

We can implement complex mapping and integration across the account. We can split pipeline concepts based on requirements and process everything. It's based on the demand. Whatever it is, we can implement it in the XML Disassembler or .class file decoding. We can split, unzip, and encode pipeline concepts.

If you're working on Edifecs transactions, you need to create the business profiles and agreements based on how it will work and transform. It will process the transactions based on this identifier and the digital profiles.

When I'm working on development side data, we don't use any DevOps. We implement Orchestrator, and it's BTDF.

My customer's usual use cases for BizTalk Server are mainly for electronic data interchange, EDI. For example, they exchange documents such as orders and invoices in a structured way, sending invoices from SAP to customers using other systems. They use numerous standard formats such as EDIFACT or TRADACOMS in the UK. My main work is to implement the translations from one system to another or from one system to a standard message format.

The features of BizTalk Server I have found the most valuable include all the connectivity to systems such as SAP and others. It is sometimes a complicated system, but you can do almost everything with it.

BizTalk Server offers workflow functionality that I find very effective for process automation. They call it orchestrations where you can define logic for integrating systems.

Regarding the adapter framework in BizTalk Server, I usually work with standard features. You have a tool called BizTalk Mapper, where you can define the mappings between different formats. It's less about programming on the very low level; it's rather doing configuration on a higher level.

The primary use case for BizTalk Server is within the shipping industry environment. Our organization relies heavily on electronic data interchange for government invoices and related system data.

The platform's most valuable feature is code integration.

BizTalk is middleware. It integrates different systems, like ERP and CRM solutions. For some systems, BizTalk has built-in adapters, while for others, we either develop custom adapters or use third-party ones to establish connections.

Compared to the current solutions I use, like Azure Logic Apps and other cloud services, BizTalk was far better and more reliable. 

Right now, we face data loss due to timeouts and other restrictions when using Azure Logic Apps and similar features. For instance, in Logic Apps, we can't use very large SQL queries. If a query doesn't execute within two minutes, it automatically times out – the default Logic App timeout is five minutes. 

However, we didn't have these kinds of limitations with BizTalk Server. Additionally, BizTalk Server offers superior speed and faster processing.

It is easy for a beginner to learn to use BizTalk Server for the first time. It is low-code and relies on configuration instead of extensive coding, so it's considered low-code.

The platform is more like a Lego landscape of different building blocks and the most valuable part is that they can be built and constructed independently. You have many degrees of freedom and all types of different applications for your business needs. In Luxembourg, I've been connecting bank interfaces, document management systems, and management systems for a two-month contract. Credit card interfaces and high deposits, etc. It was a very complicated workflow. The solution offers many degrees of freedom in order to connect different systems with complicated workflows and very complicated mappings.

There is a follow-up version called Logic App which right now runs only in the Microsoft hosted Azure Cloud. We're just using JSON instead of XML which is very simple to administer and configure because it's a platform that's a server. You do not have to install anything. You just say I need some resources and Azure will do the rest for you. It's very easy to use. In Germany, however, there are very few customers using it because no one trusts putting data onto the Cloud. It's hosted by Microsoft, it's not hosted by a private cloud. That's a specific German problem, I know that the French are less restrictive, but in Germany, that's a big problem.

For future releases, I'm guessing Microsoft is trying to build out Logic App, but having another server with the tool which actually rewires the workflow and optimizes the workflow using a simplification operator would be a huge step ahead of all other opposing products, like Oracle, or Talend.

BizTalk Server is used for system integration. Individuals convert different messages into different formats, which are transmitted through BizTalk. The solution is also used for some really brief orchestrations as well. Sophisticated workflows are really slow if they are managed with BizTalk.

BizTalk's integration with Visual Studio is the most valuable feature of this product. It makes everything easier than if you are using external tools, or if those tools are not integrated with the developer suites.