Professional BizTalk Server 2006 [Paperback]

Darren Jefford (Author), Kevin B. Smith (Author), Ewan Fairweather (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 7, 2007

This book provides insight into how industry experts have successfully architected, developed, and maintained Microsoft BizTalk Server in mission-critical environments. Authored by highly-regarded consultants with a wealth of knowledge on designing, building, and operating enterprise applications using BizTalk, this comprehensive guide gives you the techniques and best practices you’ll need to develop effective projects.

Darren Jefford is a Principal Consultant with the Microsoft UK Application Development Consulting (ADC) team who has extensive real-world experience with BizTalk Server and the broader Microsoft platform. Kevin B. Smith formerly worked as a Technical Lead Software Design Engineer for the BizTalk Server Product Team and helped ship three versions of BizTalk Server. Ewan Fairweather works as a Premier Field Engineer for Microsoft, providing onsite support to enterprise customers, including maintaining and optimizing their BizTalk Server solutions.

Achitects, developers, testers, and administrators will achieve instant success when they apply the deep technical information covered in this book. They will better appreciate the internal workings of BizTalk Server and will understand detailed solutions for challenges often experienced with BizTalk-based systems.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Professional BizTalk® Server 2006

This book provides insight into how industry experts have successfully architected, developed, and maintained Microsoft BizTalk Server in mission-critical environments. Authored by highly-regarded consultants with a wealth of knowledge on designing, building, and operating enterprise applications using BizTalk, this comprehensive guide gives you the techniques and best practices you'll need to develop effective projects.

Darren Jefford is a Principal Consultant with the Microsoft UK Application Development Consulting (ADC) team who has extensive real-world experience with BizTalk Server and the broader Microsoft platform. Kevin B. Smith formerly worked as a Technical Lead Software Design Engineer for the BizTalk Server Product Team and helped ship three versions of BizTalk Server. Ewan Fairweather works as a Premier Field Engineer for Microsoft, providing onsite support to enterprise customers, including maintaining and optimizing their BizTalk Server solutions.

Achitects, developers, testers, and administrators will achieve instant success when they apply the deep technical information covered in this book. They will better appreciate the internal workings of BizTalk Server and will understand detailed solutions for challenges often experienced with BizTalk-based systems.

What you will learn from this book

• How the BizTalk Engine works and how to develop effective pipeline components

• How to develop BizTalk orchestrations that achieve maximum performance

• Methods for using Business Activity Monitoring within your solution for enterprise-wide instrumentation

• How to utilize the rules engine within your solutions to produce quality and reliability

• Techniques for conducting performance and scalability tests to identify bottlenecks

• Ways to minimize the latency of your solution to meet challenging low latency requirements

• How system administrators can proactively manage and maintain mission-critical BizTalk solutions

• Features for BizTalk Server 2006 R2, such as the BAM Interceptor for Windows® Workflow

Who this book is for

This book is for architects, developers, testers, and administrators involved in the development of a BizTalk Server 2004 or 2006 solution.

"This book provides a fantastic insight into the inner workings of BizTalk, making it an invaluable resource for all those things you would otherwise never know. As you learn the 'tricks of the trade' from these experienced engineers, you quickly realize why everyone who has anything to do with BizTalk simply MUST read this book."
—Yossi Dahan, Managing Consultant, Sabra Ltd.

Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.

About the Author

Darren Jefford (Wiltshire, UK) joined Microsoft UK in 2002, and has worked with BizTalk Server 2004 with various customers in the UK since 2003.  He has been involved with the architecture design, development, testing and deployment of a number of large scale BizTalk Servers. He has a popular blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/darrenj/) that has allowed him to become one of the best known worldwide experts in this space.

Product Details

• Paperback: 696 pages
• Publisher: Wrox; 1 edition (May 7, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470046422
• ISBN-13: 978-0470046425
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #894,649 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Get great BizTalk insight from the horse's mouth, April 20, 2007

By 

Jon Fancey "MVP - BizTalk Server" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Professional BizTalk Server 2006 (Paperback)

The first thing I want to point out (as it's not published yet) is that I've actually read this book - and in its entirety - and I wasn't paid for it. So basically, I have no reason to misrepresent it ;-)

In my opinion, there are very few people on the planet in the position of being able to produce a book such as this. The authors are, fortunately, in this practically unique position having either worked in the product group or MCS for Microsoft over many years. Essentially if these guys don't know, or their friends (see the acknowledgements for a veritable who's who of the BizTalk Product Group) don't know - then I'm not sure anyone does.

Where this book succeeds (and others have failed) is two-fold: it starts where the documentation tails off and is written by a very small number of authors who a) have actually met and b) really are very good. so what you get is something that genuinely *is* written by the right people who know their subject areas inside-out rather than a bunch of guys who had (just) enough spare time (and knowledge) to bash out a chapter each.

Now, for the content. This book starts with a lot of assumptions about knowledge of BizTalk and its dependent technologies (xml, .net, c#, xsd etc, etc) - although Chapter 1 serves as a primer, it's not for newbies. It does however provide enough background to enable intermediates to still be able to read it without constantly referencing other sources. This of course, is a balance of reiteration and convenience. I think it strikes this perfectly as even where documented information is covered, it is explained and exposited further to delve deeper into the hows and whys. For example, dedicated chapters on low latency, testing and scalability set it apart from other books. Make no mistake, this is real world guidance and parts of it will make uncomfortable reading for some - and it's all the better for it.

BizTalk is a complex product, this book acknowledges and reflects that and if you want a BizTalk book that goes beyond the basics and into hitherto unchartered territory, jump in. Highly recommended.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent reference book, September 9, 2007

By 

Charles Young (UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Professional BizTalk Server 2006 (Paperback)

It took a long time for decent BizTalk Server books to start appearing, and those of us who have been committed to the product for some time know the pain (and fun) of having to work out, for ourselves, how this product works, how best to apply it to real-life scenarios and how to exploit its rich functionality.

I was really impressed with this book. It has two characteristics which I think are particularly noteworthy. The first is that it offers a huge breadth of coverage, but also manages to combine this with reasonable depth. This is hard to achieve when writing about BizTalk Server because it is such a rich an extensive product. The second characteristic is that it reads like a book written by practitioners - people with real-life experience of using the product, and the scars to prove it. Indeed, that it very much the case, and it means that the book provides far more than just rehashed information. It provides guidance, advice and best practice which is rooted in reality.

I like to think I know a thing or two about BizTalk Server (though it still manages to spring surprises on me quite regularly). I am not greatly addicted to computer books, because so many fail to be of any very practical use. However, I can report that this is the first BizTalk book (and one of very few books, generally) that I've carried with me into engagements to use as a reference. Warmly commended and highly recommended, especially for those who have done enough with BizTalk Server to realise the extent of the mountain they must climb.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great for Intermediates and Beyond, July 13, 2007

By 

Jeff S. King (Birmingham, AL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Professional BizTalk Server 2006 (Paperback)

I've been on a couple of BizTalk projects, all of them for Fortune 50 clients. We did a lot of things wrong, hence a lot of lessons learned. This book is good...REALLY good. How good? Well, let's just say that I never, repeat NEVER write book reviews, even if a book was the greatest thing since the bread slicer. (I guess because I'm too busy building Orchestrations and Custom Pipeline Components.) That alone should convince you that this book is a must-have for anyone wanting to know anything about BizTalk.

DISCLAIMER: Allow me to contradict that last statement... This isn't for everyone, however. It is really in-depth and explains more than the minimum required. The book also targets those of use that continue to ask the question "Why?" and it quenches our curious thirst. If I were to pick this book up when I was first learning BizTalk, I would throw it down and stomp on it. But now that I've been around the block a few times and I know the difference between a best practice and a "you're on your own" practice, I am able to get a lot from reading this material.

With BizTalk, there's so many ways to skin the proverbial cat. This books explains all of them (from what I've read), but then it points out the preferred approaches that one should take when implementing an integration solution via BizTalk Server...lots of Notes & Caveats sections, things that I crave.

This book will give you very objective insights into BizTalk. And you don't need to worry about reading it with your rose-colored glasses, either. It's neither half-empty nor half-full, it just is, you know?