BizTalk Server is Microsoft’s Integration and connectivity server solution. A mature product on its seventh release, BizTalk Server 2010 provides a solution that allows organizations to more easily connect disparate systems. Including over 25 multi-platform adapters and a robust messaging infrastructure, BizTalk Server provides connectivity between core systems both inside and outside your organization. In addition to integration functionality, BizTalk also provides strong durable messaging, a rules engine, EDI connectivity, Business Activity Monitoring (BAM), RFID capabilities and IBM Host/Mainframe connectivity.
AppFabric
Application developers shouldn’t spend their time creating infrastructure. Even though every application needs some supporting services, the people who write those applications ought to focus solely on creating value for their users. Whatever infrastructure is required should be provided by the platform they’re building on. Given this, one way to improve a platform is to provide better application infrastructure. This is exactly the goal of Windows Server AppFabric. By providing a set of extensions to Windows Server, Microsoft aims at making it easier for Windows developers to create faster, more scalable, and more manageable applications.
The first release of Windows Server AppFabric has two parts: AppFabric Caching Services, which can speed up access to frequently accessed information such as session data used by an ASP.NET application and AppFabric Hosting Services, which makes it easier to run and manage services created with Windows Communication Foundation, especially those built using Windows Workflow Foundation. Windows Server AppFabric is provided as extensions to the Application Server role of Windows Server, and an application is free to use its parts separately or together.
SQL Server Integration Services
The traditional ETL-centric data integration from standard data sources continues to be at the heart of most data warehouses. However, demands to include more diverse data sources, regulatory requirements, and global and online operations are quickly transforming the traditional requirements for data integration. In this fast growing and changing landscape, the need to extract value from data and the need to be able to rely on it is more important than ever before. Successful data integration has become the basis of effective decision-making. SQL Server Integration Services provides a flexible, fast, and scalable architecture that enables effective data integration in current business environments.
Service Oriented Architecture
Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a flexible set of design principles used during the phases of systems development and integration in computing. A system based on a SOA will package functionality as a suite of interoperable services that can be used within multiple separate systems from several business domains.
SOA also generally provides a way for consumers of services, such as web-based applications, to be aware of available SOA-based services. For example, several disparate departments within a company may develop and deploy SOA services in different implementation languages; their respective clients will benefit from a well understood, well defined interface to access them. XML is commonly used for interfacing with SOA services, though this is not required.
SOA defines how to integrate widely disparate applications for a Web-based environment and uses multiple implementation platforms. Rather than defining an API, SOA defines the interface in terms of protocols and functionality. An endpoint is the entry point for such a SOA implementation.
Enterprise Service Bus
An Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is an architectural pattern and a key enabler in implementing the infrastructure for a service-oriented architecture (SOA) . ESB is only one of many components required to build a comprehensive service-oriented infrastructure (SOI). The increasing adoption of SOA and the proliferation of Web services have revealed an ever growing need to provide a managed layer between services and their consumers. An ESB provides support for interaction between heterogeneous services and interfaces that might be mismatched, or that might change over time. An ESB addresses integration problems in a way that maximizes the re-use of services and maintains flexibility