Books
BizTalk Server 2004
Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004 Developer's Guide by Scott Woodgate, et al.
Integration Patterns PAG (architecture guidance group at Microsoft) - FREE!
BizTalk Server 2002
BizTalk Server 2002 Design and Implementation by Xin Chen. One sample chapter is available.
Biztalk Unleashed (for 2002) by Susie Adams, et al. Two sample chapters are available.
General B2B and EAI
Enterprise Integration Patterns: Designing, Building, and Deploying Messaging Solutions by Gregor Hohpe, Bobby Woolf. One sample chapter is available. There is also a paper on the author's web site on using these patterns with BizTalk Server!
Integration Patterns guidance from Microsoft.
Microsoft Web sites
BizTalk home
BizTalk Server downloads
BizTalk Server on MSDN
BizTalk Server on Technet
BizTalk Server Documentation
BizTalk Server Code Samples
BizTalk Server White Papers
GotDotNet has a page on Microsoft server products, including BizTalk.
Third-party Web sites
UsingBiztalk - your one stop shop for BizTalk Server.
TopXML has a great section on Learn B2B, BizTalk and XML. Lots of articles, presentations, and downloads.
TopXML also has some great BizTalk utilities for both 2002 and 2004.
Only4Gurus has a BizTalk Server category which has BizTalk presentations, articles, and downloads too.
Christoph has a post on BizTalk Baby Steps, to help get you up and running quickly.
Important Downloads
2004
BizTalk Server 2004 Product Documentation
Download the updated product documentation Help file to have new content for BizTalk Server 2004 on your desktop. The production documentation is updated on a quarterly basis. Or view the BizTalk Server 2004 Documentation online.
BizTalk Server 2004 SDK Refresh
The BizTalk Server 2004 SDK Refresh contains updates and additions to samples, utilities, headers, and other developer artifacts to aide in the development of BizTalk Server 2004 applications.
BizTalk Server 2004 Installation Guide
Learn how to install BizTalk Server 2004 on a single computer or on multiple computers, with the information in this document.
Orchestration Designer for Business Analysts
Visio Add-In that enables Business Analysts to create business orchestrations that can be implemented using BizTalk Server 2004.
BizTalk 2004 Tutorial
The BizTalk Server Tutorial contains detailed information about how Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004 can be used within your company to facilitate Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) and among business partners to automate business-to-business processes.
BizTalk Server 2004 Performance Characteristics
BizTalk Server 2004 Technical Deployment Guide for Security
BizTalk Server 2004 Migration
BizTalk Server 2004 Multi-Box Install
BizTalk Adapter Development Guide
2002
Microsoft BizTalk Server 2002 Publish-Subscribe Toolkit
The Microsoft BizTalk Server 2002 Publish-Subscribe Toolkit is an abstraction layer built upon the standard BizTalk objects (also called "artifacts"), such as receive functions, channels, ports, documents, and organizations.
Microsoft BizTalk Server 2002 Toolkit for Microsoft .NET
With the Microsoft BizTalk Server 2002 Toolkit for Microsoft .NET, developers can build complete BizTalk projects using Microsoft Visual Studio .NET and orchestrate ASP.NET XML Web services.
Microsoft BizTalk Server 2002 Service Pack 1
BTS 2002 SP1 contains a collection of hotfixes and security fixes, as well as support for Windows Server 2003. Before installing BizTalk Server 2002 SP1, it is strongly recommended that you carefully review the documentation located in the Related Resources section to the right.
GotDotNet Workspaces
BizTalk Server 2004 Generic Adapter Sample
Microsoft® BizTalk® 2004 enables connectivity to external systems through an extension API called the Adapter Framework. Adapters in BizTalk are the main carriers for messages (either into the BizTalk messaging repository, called the "message box" or out of it). Out of the box, BizTalk 2004 comes with adapters for open protocols such as file, http, soap, ftp and others. System-specific adapters for SAP and MQSeries are also available. The adapter framework, while being versatile and enabling extension point for writing adapters for everything you can think of, are non trivial to implement and require thorough understanding of the interface with the BizTalk runtime. This document describes a "generic adapter" (its code is accompanied), which serves as an abstraction layer and enables writing "custom adapters" quickly and easily.
BizTalk Server Adapter for SharePoint Libraries
This article describes a Microsoft® BizTalk® Server adapter that facilitates end-to-end communication between front-end Microsoft Office System 2003 applications and back-end enterprise systems. SharePoint libraries store Office System XML data while BizTalk Server orchestration provides services for integrating that data with back-end systems. This adapter makes SharePoint libraries accessible to BizTalk Server 2004 to provide an end-to-end integration path from the Office System 2003 applications to back-end enterprise systems
BizTalk Server 2004 Beta – Request Broker
The Request Broker scenario sample for Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004 Beta demonstrates how you can use BizTalk Server 2004 to implement a uniform request handler solution. The sample is intended to demonstrate development best practices to be used when building applications on BizTalk Server 2004. Annotated source code is included for review to help you understand how the application was archtected and built.
BizTalk Server 2004 Beta – Request for Quotation
The Request for Quotation for Biz Talk 2004 Beta demonstrates how you can use BizTalk Server 2004 to implement a RFQ solution. The sample is intended to demonstrate development best practices to be used when building applications on BizTalk Server 2004. Annotated source code is included for review to help you understand how the application was architected and built. Documentation is also provided which explains the scenario in detail including instructions for setting it up and running it.
BizTalk Server Fail Fast Tutorial and sample AIC
Fail fast process is the process where Microsoft BizTalk Server 2002 shuts down an XLANG schedule instance even if it is not completed. In the fail fast process, the DTC transaction rolls back and the XLANG schedule shuts down without calling any On Failure or Compensate code. In highly sensible systems this can force the developer to create a tracking mechanism to make sure all instances completed, and re-try if not. To make this process easier, we replaced the Generic AIC with our own AIC which sends a Message Queuing message to a tracking queue and only then send it to the original private queue.
BizTalk Bloggers
Owen Allen has a BizTalk Server category on his blog. His blog covers Microsoft E-Business Technologies including Content Management Server and Commerce Server as well as BizTalk Server.
Scott Woodgate's E-Business OutBursts blog is all about BizTalk Server (he also wrote Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004 Developer's Guide and is on the BizTalk team).
Sylvain Duford has a blog on Enterprise Integration with a lot of BizTalk Server content.
Kevin B Smith was a developer on the BizTalk core engine.
Speaking of BizTalk Core Engine, they have a blog too!
Scott Colestock’s blog is on BizTalk Server, business process automation, and service-orientation.
Jan Tielens has a BizTalk category on his blog.
Darren Jefford has a BizTalk category on his blog.
Paul Brown, the "BizTalk Hacker", has a BizTalk Server 2004 blog.
Laurence Timms has a BizTalk-focused blog.
Lamont Harrington has a BizTalk category on his blog.
Charles Young has a BizTalk category on his blog.
The BizTalk Visionary has a BizTalk-focused blog.
I have a BizTalk category on this blog too.
Christof Claessens' WebLog.
Jeff Lynch is a BizTalk Enthusiast.
Martijn has a blog on E-Commerce, EAI, BizTalk and .NET.
Gilles' Weblog has lots of good BizTalk 2004 information.
Eldar Musayev has a BizTalk blog.
Webcasts
Newsgroups (Microsoft-sponsored)
MSN Groups
BizTalk Server Stuff
Tips and Tricks
Deployment - tips for deploying BizTalk Server 2000.
Development - tips for BizTalk Editor.
Development - tips for BizTalk Mapper.
Development - tips for BizTalk Orchestration Designer.
Articles
Database Integration with Microsoft BizTalk Server 2002
By Scott Woodgate, Microsoft Corporation
Business-to-business data processing requires data interchange that uses XML as the ubiquitous, extensible, and platform-independent transform format. The challenge is how to reconcile the requirements of relational data stores and hierarchical XML data. This article focuses on providing reusable samples and techniques for integrating Microsoft BizTalk Server 2002 and databases, with specific reference to leveraging Microsoft SQL Server 2000.
Orchestrate Web Services with BizTalk Server 2002
By Randy Holloway
BizTalk Server supports the defining and changing of business processes through BizTalk Orchestration, which enables messaging and the integration of application components. Randy explains how to use BizTalk Orchestration and Web services integration.
Microsoft BizTalk Server 2002 First Look
By Hitesh Seth
The author takes a quick look at BizTalk Server, including a useful image showing the BizTalk architecture.
BizTalk Server 2004: Harnessing Data and Content
By Jame Healy
.NETDJ Guest Editor Jame Healy recently interviewed Microsoft's Scott Woodgate, lead product manager for Microsoft's E-Business Servers group. In this exclusive interview, Woodgate talks about the history of BizTalk Server, the process of developing a new BizTalk Server version, and bridging the gap between developers and business analysts.
A Basic Introduction to Messaging with Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004
By Christof Claessens
BizTalk Server 2004 has just been released and a lot of people are planning to hit the road with it. While BizTalk Server 2004 has lot to offer, this article focuses on the core workings of this brand new server, more in particular: messaging.
BizTalk Baby Steps
By Christoph Schittko
The lack of BizTalk developer documentation however, is making it very hard to take your first baby steps with BizTalk. You feel like a toddler with the urge to run, but you first have to master taking simple steps first. I had quite a few moments where I just wanted to plop on my butt an cry until my mommy comes and makes it all go away ... I hope this article will help some people to get past the baby step phase quicker and get them running in no time.