News

Testers Can Get BizTalk Server 2013 Beta

Microsoft announced availability of BizTalk Server 2013 in beta format.

• By Kurt Mackie
• 11/08/2012

Microsoft released a beta test version of BizTalk Server 2013, the company's newest integration and connectivity server. This follows the release of a community technology preview version of BizTalk Server 2010 R2, the current flagship product, for its Technology Adoption Program customers.

The beta adds support for Windows Server 2012, SQL Server 2012 and Visual Studio 2012, as well as "new IBM systems," according to Microsoft's blog post announcement. Microsoft is promising transaction integration with solutions from Oracle, SAP and Microsoft (Dynamics and SharePoint). Developers can leverage BizTalk through SharePoint's Business Connectivity Services capability. Microsoft added a "new OLE DB provider for Informix and new Service for [IBM's] DB2 DRDA [distributed relational database architecture]," according to the blog post.

The release notes for BizTalk 2013 indicate that the solution will be available via Microsoft's Windows Azure cloud or on-premises as a server. The on-premises BizTalk Server 2013 product will have adapters that will enable BizTalk Server applications to connect with Windows Azure.

Microsoft made some adjustments as to how business activity monitoring (BAM) alerts are supported in BizTalk Server 2013 when working with Microsoft's newer server products. BAM alerts previously depended on using SQL Server Notification Services. However, SQL Server Notification Services won't be available in SQL Server 2012, Microsoft's current flagship relational database management system. Consequently, the Microsoft engineering team made sure that BAM works without Notification Services in BizTalk 2013. However, organizations using the older SQL Server 2008 R2 technology with BizTalk 2013 will still need to tap Notification Services.

BizTalk Server 2013 will arrive with an alphabet-soup-like roster of improvements. Users can invoke REST endpoints. Messages can be sent and received via secure FTP servers. The ESB Toolkit is now integrated with the server, among other enhancements.