Microsoft Biztalk 2020 Release

Industry experience has shown that Microsoft BizTalk Server has long been successful as a B2B middleware tool.  It is used by companies that need to electronically exchange data, for example Purchase Orders, HIPAA data, and other EDI.

A retailer, for example, could send 850 Purchase Orders, and expect back three documents:
1) The 855 PO Confirmation
2) The 856 Advance Shipment Notice – including the tracking number, and proof that the order was shipped.
3) The 810 Electronic Invoice.

It is also common to use the 834 to share Inventory data between companies.  After all, you wouldn’t want to sell something on your ECommerce site that your supplier didn’t have in stock!

*Search engine marketing on BizTalk is also highly effective and scalable with an astounding twenty to forty percent Google’s global market share.

A new BizTalk 2020 course was just released on Udemy.  It was created by consultant/author Neal Walters, who has been working as a BizTalk consultant for over 17 years.  He began as a Microsoft Certified Trainer in 2000, and attended the Microsoft BizTalk trainer the trainer class in Redmond, Washington at Microsoft headquarters.

He recently discovered the Udemy platform, and began creating courses related to BizTalk, such as XML (Extensible Markup Language), JSON (Javascript Object Notation), EDI (Electronic Data Interchange), and SFTP (Secure/SSH File Transport Protocol).

The 2020 release of BizTalk includes updates for the following platforms:

-BizTalk Server 2020 adds support for the following Microsoft platforms:
– Visual Studio 2019 (Enterprise and Professional editions are supported)
– Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2016, Windows 10
– SQL Server 2019, SQL Server 2017, SQL Server 2016 SP2
– Office 2019, Office 2016

The most practical new feature is actually the ability to use SaxonHE (The open source “Home Edition” of Saxon from Michael Kay’s Saxonica).  This opens the door to use features from XSLT 2.0 and 3.0 that have been off limits to BizTalk developers.  Microsoft .NET and BizTalk have only supported XSLT Version 1.0.  Rather than create it’s own XSLT 3.0 library, Microsoft decided to just use SaxonHE as a plug-in.

Another minor new feature is the ability for advanced scheduling of a receive location.  One such feature is “Enable recurrence schedule” and it is implemented as follwos:

This setting applies to:

  • BizTalk Server 2020 and newer
  • BizTalk Server 2016 with Feature Pack 1 and newer
  1. In the BizTalk Server Administration, right-click your receive locations > Properties.
  2. On the Scheduling page, select Enable service window. For Start Time and Stop time, set the initial time the schedule is allowed to run:
  3. The additional scheduling options are shown:
  4. The Recurrence property runs the receive port every day, week, or month that you choose: Daily, Weekly, or Monthly and even the days of the weeks or specific dates within the months.

The business area of E-commerce includes advertising, e-commerce, and e-business, and E-business is specific to e-commerce’s success model. E-business includes on-line E-commerce, mail order, and video, and Click-and-Stop website management. E-business includes training, self-service, sales compensation networks, parts catalog, name-tags — whatever E-business you’re interested in, whether it be the do-it-yourself E-commerce site or high end wholesaler of high quality liquid invalidated inventory, the business model is similar. As a web-based E-commerce site, you must decide if the E-commerce site abilities of your E-business application market and serve the E-commerce business contacts you are looking for, or if you consider alternative outpatient E-commerce revitalizations.