Finally BizTalk 2006 R3 *ahem* BizTalk 2009 has entered public beta. This means you can take an early look at the next generation of BizTalk (and, hopefully a new generation of developer tools!). Even with BizTalk 2006 R2, you are required to run Visual Studio 2005!
The project is up on Microsoft Connect – download link is located (1) here. You may require a Live ID in order to reach the page.
Many thanks to Craig Bailey’s excellent (2) blog for the heads up.
Below are some of the new/improved features and functionality for BizTalk 2009:
- Support for .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 and Visual Studio 2008 SP1 – take advantages of the latest developer tools.
- Support for Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 – full support of Hyper-V, and increased performance and scale.
- ALM – new support is provided for Team Foundation Server (TFS), allowing development teams to leverage the integrated source control, bug tracking, support for team development, Project Server integration and support for automating builds via MSBuild
- Enhanced Developer Productivity – improved underlying project system enhances debugging support for artifacts, pipeline components and orchestrations, and enables support for unit testing.
Here’s some of the more important notes from the release notes to take into consideration:
- If your BizTalk Server 2009 project uses the SQL adapter, you must install SQLXML 3.0 SP3. You can install SQLXML 3.0 SP3 from http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=122479.
- If you are using a computer that is running Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista, you must start Microsoft Visual Studio® as an administrator in order to run the SQL Adapter metadata generation wizard. (no big surprise there I guess)
[(1) https://connect.microsoft.com/Downloads/Downloads.aspx?SiteID=218]
[(2) http://www.craigbailey.net/live/post/2008/12/15/BizTalk-Server-2009-Beta-released.aspx#comment]
