BizTalk 101 - Back to Basics

The Bloggers Guide to Oslo and Connected Systems V0.2

Alan Smith — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 08:07:18 GMT

It’s been a very busy week in terms of announcements. “Dublin” has been announced, and Darren Jefford probably has the best summary of what Dublin is and how it will affect us. Channel 9 has published some great webcasts looking at Visual Studio 2010 and the testing and UML features included in the new release.

I like working with UML, but it’s not had that much exposure on the .net platform. I fought hard with Rational XDE for Visual Studio.net for a few days back in the day, and have also dabbled with Visio, but never found it a satisfying experience. The Top Down design webcast shows that the UML features are comprehensive, and should be very productive, whilst the Bottom Up webcast shows how you can easily visualise a complex project, and drill down into the detailed architecture aspects very easily.

There have also been some great posts relating to “Oslo” and BizTalk Services, so I’ve compiled a new version of “The Bloggers Guide to Oslo”, and renamed it to “The Bloggers Guide to Oslo and Connected Systems” to reflect the changes in scope of the codenames. It’s up on the “BloggersGuides.net” website in the downloads section.

Custom XSLT and Sequential Convoy Sushi Server Webcasts

Alan Smith — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 17:45:08 GMT

I’ve added another two webcasts to the BloggersGuides.net website. One of them has been on my to-do list for a long time. There have been a lot of BizTalk mapping questions on the forums where the best answer is “Don’t use the mapper, use custom XSLT!”, so I’ve finally added a webcast to show you how you can achieve this.

BizTalk - Custom XSLT Mapping

The other one is taken form a demo that I have been running in the BizTalk courses I teach for a while. It’s looking at how BizTalk Server can be used to take a stream of RFID tag reads, and create a process that produces business related information. I’m using WPF to create an “Animated Sushi Emporium”, complete with conveyer belt and RIFD reader, and then using a fairly basic sequential convoy to determine which sushi plates have been consumed, and which are too old and need to be removed.

BizTalk - Sequential Convoy Sushi Server

The full list of BizTalk downloads is here.

I have quite a few more webcasts on my to-do list, but I also do requests, so if you have an idea, let me know and I’ll see what I can come up with.

WCF Technology Specilist

Alan Smith — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 09:06:44 GMT

On Friday I passed the “70-503 - TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 – Windows Communication Foundation Application Development”, so that makes me a “Technology Specialist” in WCF. This is the third technology specialist (TS) exam I have taken, the others being BizTalk Server 2004, and BizTalk Server 2006, so it felt good to broaden the spectrum a bit. I prefer the TS exams to the regular .net exams; I have the MCSD certification, which required passing four .net exams and a server product exam (I chose SQL Server 2000 for that). The TS exams are much more focussed instead of covering a broad area, and the questions tend to be tougher, but more focussed towards hands-on experience.

If you are thinking of going for the exam, make sure you really know the topics that are listed in the official preparation guide here. The best book that I found for covering the basics was “Learning WCF: A Hands-on Guide” by Michele Leroux Bustamante. This will cover most of the stuff you need for the exam, and go into sufficient depth on all the topics covered, there’s also about 20 or so labs that you should run through to get the hands-on experience. If you are fully knowledgeable with everything covered here you are well on your way to pass. There are some points on the official preparation guide that are not covered in Learning WCF, so you should make sure you have the 3.5 features covered and look at consuming non WCF services.

The Road to Oslo #2 – Product Outlines

Alan Smith — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 09:04:11 GMT

History

Back in 2005 Eddie Churchill, one of the BizTalk team members presented a couple of Channel 9 video titled “First look at Solution Designer” and “Biztalk's sexy new XSLT Mapper”. These videos showed very early prototypes of want may go on to form a part of BizTalk Server vNext. The BizTalk Solution Designer and the new mapper looked like great tools, and I remember many BizTalk developers looking forward to using them in BizTalk applications. Unfortunately they never made it into BizTalk, and the BizTalk team continued with the development of future versions of BizTalk Server and pretty much stuck with the same developer toolset.

About the same time in 2005, Microsoft announced Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF at the time, later changed to WF), and ever since then there has been speculation that WF would replace the orchestration engine in BizTalk Server, with Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) forming the communication layer. BizTalk Server 2006 R2 saw the introduction of WCF based adapters, and a new adapter framework that is based on WCF, but so far there has been no use of WF in BizTalk Server.

Oslo Unveiled

In October 2007, two years after Eddie’s presentation and the announcement of WF, Microsoft publicly unveiled the “Codename Oslo” strategy at the SOA/BPM summit in Redmond. They announced that there would be a “Universal Editor”, a graphical tool that could be used by architects and analysts to model SOA and integration applications at a high level. This “Universal Editor” may lift some of the ideas from the BizTalk Solution Designer, but it is expected that it will be much less technical in nature as it’s aimed at modelling applications rather than implementing them. They also announced a number of other technologies that would be included in the Oslo wave of technologies.

· BizTalk Server "V6"

· System Center "V5"

· Visual Studio "V10"

· BizTalk Services "V1"

· .NET Framework "V4"

Since then there has not been much public information shared about Oslo, there have been a few rumours circulating regarding some of the Oslo technologies.

Oslo at TechEd

TechEd US in June saw pretentions and interviews by David Chappell and Jon Flanders that were touching on Oslo technologies but not going into any deep technical details on what would be delivered. David gave a good overview of the Oslo technologies, and Jon provided some useful information for developers who are wanting to gear up for Oslo.

In the TechEd Fishbowl interview, David Chappell mentioned that Oslo would consist of three main components.

· A storage repository and visual modelling tool

· A new version of Windows Workflow Foundation

· A process server to host WCF services and WF workflows

This was the first public indications of the development of the Oslo platform from Microsoft that has come since the SOA/BPM summit in October last year.

September Announcement

On 5^th September 2008 there was an announcement in the BizTalk homepage regarding the future directions of BizTalk and Oslo, featuring a Q&A with Oliver Sharp, and an updated BizTalk Roadmap.

BizTalk Server 2006 R3 has been renamed to BizTalk Server 2009. This decision makes a lot of sense. BizTalk Server 2006 R2 was basically the same server runtime and development tools as BizTalk Server 2006, but with the addition of features for WCF, WDI, RFID, and BAM interceptors for WF and WCF. BizTalk Server 2009 will see improvements in the developer tools, support for the 2008 wave of developer tools and server platform, as well as enhanced EDI and UDDI functionality. Microsoft also announced that there would be continued development of the BizTalk platform in the future, with a release cycle roughly every two years. This is very good news for existing BizTalk customers and developers as it confirms the commitment to continue development of BizTalk Server for the foreseeable future.

One of the proposed features for the version after 2009 is improved developer productivity enhancements, mentioning complex mapping. So one day we may see some of the ideas from Eddie Churchill’s “Sexy New XSLT Mapper” finally make it into the product.

The September announcement also changed the scope of codename Oslo in a significant way. Last year Oslo was described as a large collection of differing technologies, at PDC David Chappell described Oslo’s three main components as modelling tools, a process server, and a new version of WF. According to the announcement, Oslo now consists of just the modelling components.

· A modelling tool

· A modelling language

· A storage repository

This is confirmed by Douglas Purdy in his “What is Oslo?” blog post. “That is it. That is all Oslo is. Oslo is just the modelling platform.”

This makes a lot of sense, as previously there were a large range of existing and future technologies that were under the Oslo umbrella. This “wave of technologies” included server products, modelling tools, and improvements in the .net platform. Having a clear definition of Oslo representing the modelling aspects of these technologies provides a much clearer definition of what Oslo is.

As for the process server, the new workflow version, BizTalk Services, and the other developments, we will have to wait until PDC at the end of October for further confirmation. It should be a very exciting conference.

New BizTalk / Connected Systems Community Site

Alan Smith — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 06:09:11 GMT

Yesterday I launched “bloggersguides.net” a community site that will host resources for BizTalk Server and the up and coming Oslo technologies.

http://bloggersguides.net

The Bloggers Guide to BizTalk 2.0

If you have worked with BizTalk a while you may remember “The Bloggers Guide to BizTalk” which I first published back in October 2004. I’ve updated the BizTalk guide to include the latest contributions and added content from some new blogs. The guide now has about 500 articles.

The Bloggers Guide to Oslo 0.1

The Bloggers Guide to Oslo will follow on from The Bloggers Guide to BizTalk, focussing on the Oslo wave of technologies. V 0.1 has a small amount of content, as most of the people who know anything about Oslo are under NDA at the moment; there is not that much information available in public yet. We can expect this to change around the time of PDC in October, and the content in the guide will increase greatly.

BizTalk & Oslo Webcasts

I’ve uploaded a few webcasts looking at BizTalk Server and BizTalk Services (the two are not related in any way J). I will get to work on adding more webcasts in the future, any suggestions welcome.

Regards,

Alan

BizTalk Test Workshop, Cloud Platforms Whitepaper & Jon Flanders in Stockholm

Alan Smith — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 07:51:04 GMT

BizTalk Test Workshop

I’ll be running the first public delivery of the BizTalk Test Workshop I have been creating on the 18-19^th of September in Stockholm. It’s a two-day course that covers an introduction to test strategies, and then looks at applying those strategies to a BizTalk project. Unit testing, stress testing, integration testing, functional testing and user acceptance testing are covered. NUnit, VSTS Test, BizUnit and Load Gen will be used as the main testing tools, with InfoPath and Excel used to drive the user acceptance tests. The course will also look at using other diagnostics tools to examine the performance and reliability of a BizTalk Server solution. I’ve already taught the course twice before in private deliveries, so hopefully all the issues with the labs and demos should be ironed out by now.

If you are interested in attending, contact Informator in Stockholm who are hosting the course.

http://informator.se/product.aspx?ArticleNr=T2841

The course will be taught in English.

If you are interested in custom deliveries of the course at your location, feel free to contact me via my blog.

A Short Introduction to Cloud Platforms

David Chappell (the west-coast David Chappell) has published quite a good whitepaper on cloud based platforms, mentioning the foundations, infrastructure and application services that will make up a platform in the cloud. As with the other David-Chappell whitepapers it’s worth a read if you are interested in all things cloud based.

http://www.davidchappell.com/CloudPlatforms--Chappell.pdf

Jon Flanders Presenting in Stockholm

Jon Flanders will be presenting at the BizTalk User Group in Stockholm on September 4^th, if you are in the area it will be worth attending, the link for registration is here:

http://biztalkusergroup.se/

The Road to Oslo

Alan Smith — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 22:22:41 GMT

If you have been keeping up to date with developments within the Connected Systems Division within Microsoft you will be aware of the “Oslo” initiative. Microsoft has released information about this here, and Charles Young has a very informed summery of the initiative here.

I’m not going to discuss too much about what Oslo is, what I will look at is how current and future BizTalk developers can start to consider the impact that Oslo will have on development, and how we can start looking at technologies and developing skills that will be relevant on the new platform. This is just my opinion, as a BizTalk developer I’m keen to keep up to date with new developments, and I’m currently following these guidelines myself.

The first version of Oslo is scheduled for release sometime in 2009, which means we may see TAP, CTP and Beta releases sometime in 2008. If you are a seasoned BizTalk developer or a newbie, Oslo will have a major impact on your development over the next few years. So how should we go about navigating the road to Oslo?

What if I am a BizTalk 2004/2006 developer?

It remains to be seen what the general architecture and feature set for the first release of Oslo will look like. One thing that Microsoft has promised us is that “nothing is going away”, meaning that we will still be able to develop using the tools that we are familiar with, and the applications we are developing today will still work on the new platform. This is very different from the transition from BizTalk 2002 to 2004, when people were saying that having no knowledge of BizTalk 2002 was an advantage to learning 2004, and migrating applications was often more of a re-write than a migration.

We are already seeing some of the technologies that may be refined to make up parts of the Oslo platform; some of those are available in BizTalk Server 2006 R2, others as side projects. These are discussed in the “How do I get a head start in Oslo” section. If you are working with BizTalk today and want to start planning for the future, it’s maybe worth spending time checking them out.

I need to start an integration project, should I use BizTalk 2006 R2?

Absolutely. Since the 2004 release BizTalk Server has been the natural choice for developing integration solutions on the Microsoft platform. The feature set has been strengthened considerably in the 2006 and 2006 R2 releases, including strong EDI and WCF support in 2006 R2. As mentioned earlier “nothing is going away”, so if you need to start a project in the near future, BizTalk 2006 R2 is still the best choice.

When we get nearer the release dates, have more concrete information on the architecture and feature set, and CTP or Beta releases become available the choice of going for Oslo may start to become an option. There may be a chance to become involved in the TAP program and have early access to the bits. Bear in mind that in the early days Oslo will be a very new platform, whilst BizTalk has a wealth of documentation, knowledge, books, courses, blogs, and community experience, Oslo will be a voyage of discovery for everyone, and you will need to plan for this in your development cycle. If, like me, you were an early adopter for BizTalk Server 2004 you will know what I’m talking about.

I want to start learning about BizTalk, what should I start looking at?

Depending on your experience it can take up to twelve months to become a proficient BizTalk 2006 developer (I’ve been hard at it for over four years and am still learning new stuff about the core BizTalk engine). As Oslo is scheduled for a release some time in 2009, we may well see public Betas and CTP releases within twelve months. If you are planning on learning BizTalk to strengthen your CV it may be more worthwhile looking at the new technologies that are becoming available rather than learning BizTalk Server 2006 R2.

As Microsoft are keeping many of the details about the Oslo feature set under wraps it may be the case that if you spend the next twelve months learning 2006 R2, things change significantly and you will be back to the tutorials again. It could also be the case that your 2006 skills are very relevant and applicable to the new platform, so again it’s a bit of a gamble.

One thing we can be certain of is that WCF will increase in importance in the BizTalk feature set, and WCF will be more applicable to general development as well. If you have the time to develop your skills, you could consider looking at the WCF features in the current BizTalk release, and other related technologies, (BizTalk’s WCF adapters, WCF LOB adapter SDK, BizTalk Labs). The next section will discuss these technologies.

How do I get a head start in Oslo?

There are a number of technologies that Microsoft has been releasing that may, in a more mature form, go on to form part of Oslo. If you are keen to get ahead and stay ahead on the Oslo platform it would be well worth investing some time in them. Be aware that plans change, promised features change, and strategies change (remember “Jupiter”?), so be aware that investing time in the bleeding edge technology can be a gamble.

If you are keen to be an Oslo early adapter, here’s some stuff to look at: (Be aware that this is just my personal opinion.)

Windows Communication Foundation

WCF is becoming increasingly important on the Microsoft platform, especially the “Connected Systems” projects. If Oslo is to be a SOA platform, WCF will be the foundation that platform will be built on. We are already seeing WCF being adopted in the BizTalk product line (WCF adapters in R2, WCF Line of Business Adapter SDK, BizTalk Adapter Pack, BizTalk Labs), expect this trend to continue. Having a solid knowledge of WCF will likely be one of the core skills required for the Oslo platform.

Considering the importance of WCF on the Microsoft platform, it should be on most developer’s to-do lists. If you run Vista, or can run a virtual image with Server 2008 (you need a fast PC to do this!) check out hosting WCF in WAS.

Windows Workflow Foundation

WF has been around for a while now, and it has been discussed as a replacement for the BizTalk Orchestration Engine in BizTalk vNext ever since it appeared. As we know that the Orchestration Engine will still be present (“nothing goes away”), it remains to be seen how much of an impact WF will have on Oslo development. If Microsoft can deliver a solid workflow host with comparable development and management tools to the current orchestration designer, WF may be the weapon of choice for building business processes. As we know Oslo will be a long term strategy, there is a chance that we may still be choosing to build orchestrations rather than workflows on the early versions of the platform. It will be a while before we can make a decision on this.

If you will be looking at WF, the integration between WCF and WF in .net 3.5 looks like something worth exploring. The first version of WF had no concept of sending and receiving messages, the core functionality of most BizTalk orchestrations. In .net 3.5 we have a SendActivity and a ReceiveActivity, allowing WF workflows to publish and consume WCF endpoints. WF may be a skill worth having, but I’d prioritise on learning WCF if you are limited for time.

WCF Line of Business Adapter SDK

http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/technologies/wcflobadaptersdk.mspx

Microsoft’s strategy to migrate adapters to use WCF instead of being dependent on BizTalk makes a lot of sense. In the future we will be using .net adapters, rather than BizTalk adapters. The BizTalk Adapter Pack is making a start on this move; expect to see more adapters migrated in the future.

A great way to learn about the new adapter framework is to download the WCF LOB adapter SDK and take a run through the tutorial. Even if you are not going to develop your own adapters, it will give you an insight into how the new adapters will be built, it’s also great to look at the more advanced aspects of WCF development.

BizTalk Labs

http://labs.biztalk.net/

BizTalk Labs is a pilot project to investigate the use of an Internet Service Bus (ISB) in connected system development. The future of BizTalk labs has not been determined, but there is a good chance that one of the aims of running this project is to prototype ideas that may form part of the Oslo platform. If you want to explore BizTalk labs, there is an SDK to download, and you will need to set up an account. As it’s an experimental project it’s not guaranteed that the servers will running 24/7.

The relevance of BizTalk labs to the Oslo platform will not become clear for a while (the FAQ is worth reading for more info), so investing a lot of time learning them is a bit of a gamble, but it may well pay off in the future. BizTalk labs uses WCF as a framework, rather than BizTalk, so it’s another chance to get more WCF experience.

It’s all about WCF

The WCF-WF integration in .net 3.5, the BizTalk WCF adapters, the WCF LOB adapter SKD and BizTalk Labs are all based on WCF as their foundation. It’s fairly easy to conclude that WCF is going to be the key technology to understanding and leveraging this new wave of products.

Reboot for the BizTalk User Group Sweden (BUGS)

Alan Smith — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 09:22:27 GMT

After meeting with Johan and Mikael from WMData we have planned a new start for the BizTalk user group. We plan to hold about six meetings during 2008, about one every two months.

The first meeting will be at 17:45 on the Tuesday the 12^th February at the KnowIT offices in central Stockholm (Klarabergsgatan 60, two minutes walk from the central station). . If you would like to attend, or be on the mailing list for future events, contact me via the blog with your email details.

The agenda for the first meeting is:

17:45 Samling

18:00 Start

Introduktion till Usergroupen och dess arbete

ESB Guidance (Mikael Håkansson och Johan Hedberg)

19:00 Paus, mingel, diskussioner. Något att äta och dricka kommer finnas.

19:30 ESB Guidance avslutas

Oslo (Alan Smith)

Q & A, avrundning, diskussioner

Oslo är en samling tekniska lösningar som ska förenkla byggandet av applikationer för en tjänsteorienterad arkitektur. Med Oslo förflyttar vi oss från att modeller beskriver applikationer till att modellen är applikationen. Läs mer på http://www.microsoft.com/soa/products/oslo.aspx.

ESB Guidance är ett steg i riktningen att lyfta BizTalk till mer av en Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) med utökat stöd för löst kopplade tjänster. Läs mer på http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb931189.aspx. Presentationen kommer belysa hur BizTalk relaterar till SOA, SOI och inte minst ESB. Vi kommer gå igenom stöd, riktlinjer, komponenter och tillhörande portal, och ge en bild av hur ESB Guidance kan konfigureras, användas och utökas

Free BizTalk Skills Assessment Quiz from Quick Learn

Alan Smith — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 17:23:28 GMT

As with any certification one of the hardest things is deciding if and when you are ready to sit the exam. The BizTalk 2006 exam will test you on general BizTalk development, deployment, BAM and business rules and you will have to have quite a bit of real world hands-on experience to get a good score.

If you want to measure up your skills, Quick Learn has a free practice test on their site. The test was developed so that students can assess their skills and see if they have the experience required to take the advanced BizTalk Deep Dive course. The practice test is focused on general development, so you will still need to know about rules, BAM, and deployment and maintenance. But if you get a good score and are fairly comfortable with the other topics, then go for it and take the real exam.

If you feel you need to skill-up, you should consider attending a Deep Dive or Immersion course dependant on your experience. Both courses have been updated to cover the BizTalk 2006 R2 functionality, and the Deep Dive is aimed at getting you up to the required level for the exam. Even if you think you know your stuff you will benefit from a Deep Dive course. I have been teaching BizTalk Deep Dive for over two years now and I still learn a lot from the technical discussions that take place in a class of BizTalk experts over the five days.

The quiz is here.

SOA & Business Process Conference

Alan Smith — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 13:34:39 GMT

I’m currently in Bellevue, near Redmond and the SOA & Business Process Conference kicks off today with a meet up at Parlor Billiards in the evening.

A few of us decided to meet up in Manzana’s for a meal Sunday Night, Jon Flanders made a brief appearance, Sam Gentile, Tim Rayburn and Saravana Kumar stayed around for food, and we were joined by the guys from KnowIT.

This will be my first time presenting, I’ll be talking about “Reliable Messaging on the Microsoft Connected Systems Platform” on Thursday afternoon. There are a lot of great presentations to look out for this year:

Steve Swartz and Clemens Vasters will be talking about the evolution of the SOA platform, Darren Jefford will be telling us how we should be testing our BizTalk applications, Jon Flanders has a session on BAM and WCF, Matt Meleski on error handling in BizTalk, Dwight Goins on mobile WCF services, John Callaway on SOA anti-patters and Stephen W. Thomas on advanced orchestrations are a few that I have on my list.

The schedule will be hectic, Marjan has been busy organizing another MVP and Influential’s dinner, and I have a few engagement meetings with various people from the BizTalk team, I’ll also be spending time with the QuickLearn guys working on the new DeepDive course, and helping out on the QuickLearn stand in the exhibitors booth.

If you are at the conference, drop round to the Ask the Experts session Tuesday evening and say “Hi!. I’ll be answering questions on BizTalk team development. If not, keep your eyes open for the next one around the same time next year. If you are focused on BizTalk, WF, WCF and related stuff this is the place to be.

BizTalk Server 2006 Virtual Multi-Box Install Lab

Alan Smith — Tue, 29 May 2007 10:12:07 GMT

I wrote this lab about a year or so ago, with a view to posting it when I got the time. If you want to learn about multi-server installs with BizTalk, it may be a good idea to run through it in a virtual environment first. It will probably take you about half a day to run through the lab, but most of the time will be spent waiting for the various installs to complete.

You can find the lab here.

BlogCast Interview By Dag König

Alan Smith — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 14:35:00 GMT

Hi,

One of my work colegues, Dag König, finally persuaded me to sit an interview for his blog. Dag is one of Sweden's experts in all things SOA, Microsoft, and beta, and has been running one of the most popular developers blogs in Sweden for a couple of years.

Dag was, of course, interested in BizTalk 2006, and how it fits in with SOA and workflow Foundation. The blog is in Swedish, but we took the interview in English.

The interview is here.

Dag König's Blog is here.

Sweden BizTalk Users Group

Alan Smith — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 15:44:00 GMT

Hi,

I'm thinking of seeing if there is enough interest to start a BizTalk User Group in Sweden. The plan is to meet in Stockholm, in the city, after work hours, maybe 5pm. You will have to put up with me talking the first time, but I plan to involve other speakers to talk about Windows Workflow, SOA, and other BizTalk related stuff.

If you are interested, hit the "Contact" link and I will get back to you with further details. I am aiming for late November, early December for the first meeitng.

Cheers,

Alan

New Bloggers Guide Out

Alan Smith — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 14:28:00 GMT

Get Your Kicks with 2006…

It’s been a busy summer, and in Sweden you have to make the most of it. But, eventually, here is the latest version of the guide. Big credit to Stephen Thomas and Matt Hall for keeping the good posts coming.

There’s a whole bunch of 2006 posts here, BAM, Suspended Message Routing, ESSO SnapIn, Install + Config, Mapper Improvements e.t.c.

I’ve automated the process a bit by C#ing to create the table of contents for the help compiler, HTML Help Workshop was getting a bit out of hand with over 300 articles. Hope this went well, let me know if it didn’t.

Sorry if I have missed adding your blog/articles, my inbox was in chaos after the summer, and I may have missed your mail. Ping me again and I’ll add it to the October release (Also the first anniversary, Wohooo!!!).

Get it here...

I Passed BizTalk Exam!

Alan Smith — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 18:09:00 GMT

I took the BizTalk 2004 exam today and passed. I thought it was pretty hard, but the questions were fair, and a good test of your hands-on experience and understanding of the product. It would be hard to just cram for the exam from documents, if you don’t know the product, you won’t do too well. It has a reputation for not being an easy exam, so that’s more credit to anyone who passes.

Some resources I found helpful:

BizTalk Server 2004 Unleashed

Good info in the more detailed sections, and helpful for the admin, and management stuff.

BizTalk Documentation

Read the more advanced stuff (and make sure you have the latest update!)

SDK Samples

Run through these, deploy them, and get an understanding of how the code works.

Deep Dive Course

If you have a chance to get on the course, go for it, it’s a great help for the exam. If you have taken the course and understand the content you have a good chance, re-read the slides on the stuff you are unsure of.

Whitepapers

There’s a good section of whitepapers appearing on MSDN, they are worth checking out.