I've decided to repost a few articles after receiving several emails asking how to "plan and develop" a BizTalk application. As with any development project, planning is the key to success!
OK! You've played around with BizTalk Server 2004 for several months (perhaps more), you've developed a few quick and simple EAI scenarios and migrated a few existing integrations from BTS2002 to BTS2004. You've told your boss that you've got it down pat! So your boss walks into your office one fine morning and says “since you've done so well on these little projects, why not take on something a little bit bigger... why not use BTS2004 to integrate ALL our purchase orders and invoices between our Houston, TX and Glasgow, Scotland operations so we can stop all this manual processing. Shouldn't be a problem for a high-tech guy like you! RIGHT???”. So you take a few deep breaths and bolt for the door (just kidding)!
In every business critical application development project planning is VITAL! Let me say it one more time for those of you with a little less gray hair than mine (if you didn't grow up on Cobol and Fortran this means you!), PLANNING IS VITAL!
I like to start my BizTalk Server 2004 projects by using Visio 2003 to draw an overview diagram of the integration as shown in Figure 1 below. This helps me (and my boss) to visualize what we are trying to accomplish from a technical point of view.
Figure 1: Integration Overview
In this scenario I will be using BTS2004 to integrate purchase orders and invoices between two divisions of our company which have a typical “buy-sell” relationship as is the case in most global corporations. Before beginning, there are always a few assumptions to be made.
- We plan to use BTS2004 Standard Edition at the Houston facility and BTS2004 Partner Edition at the Glasgow facility.
- We plan to use FTP transport over a secure VPN connection (although we could have used HTTPS / SSL over the Internet).
- Each facility runs their own ERP system “instance” but the systems are essentially the same except for the currency used.
- Each ERP system will accept the other's currency and handle all currency translations internally.
Over the next few weeks, I'll post additional details on how I "plan" my BizTalk applications.