Let’s begin by stating the obvious: BizTalk Server is a complex product. It is both a development platform and a runtime, defining some artifacts of its own, such as orchestrations and pipelines, while welcoming the inclusion of standard XML schemas, XML transforms and any manner of .NET-based components. It includes a rules engine, business activity monitoring framework and more. To make it all work at runtime, BizTalk requires nearly everything to be transformed into .NET code and deployed in a very specific way.
Needless to say, as a BizTalk developer it is far too easy to spend hours on end dealing with the overhead of the product’s deployment requirements and other – to put it kindly – “quirks,” instead of creating and testing the actual functionality that your solution requires. If you are reading this text, then you have undoubtedly experienced this frustration yourself. There is a clear need for a set of tools that both simplifies the developer experience and boosts developer productivity – the Deployment Framework for BizTalk, or BTDF.
The Deployment Framework for BizTalk eliminates the pain associated with BizTalk application deployments, and goes far beyond BizTalk’s out-of-box deployment functionality by including various tools to enhance BizTalk developer productivity.
The Deployment Framework includes the following features:
- Automation of the entire BizTalk application deployment and update processes
- Support for BizTalk Server 2006, 2006 R2, 2009 and 2010 and BizTalk ESB Toolkit 2.0 and 2.1 on both 32- and 64-bit Windows
- Support for Windows XP, Vista and 7 and Windows Server 2003 through 2008 R2
- Integration with Visual Studio 2005/2008/2010 menus, toolbars and output window, plus IntelliSense and Add New Project wizard
- Support for deployment of various BizTalk artifacts including:
- Messaging bindings
- Orchestrations
- Schemas
- Maps
- Pipelines
- Custom components (DLL’s)
- Custom pipeline components
- Custom functoids
- Rules and vocabularies
- IIS virtual directories
- Single Sign-On (SSO) applications
- BAM activities
- ESB Toolkit itineraries
- Configuration settings infrastructure including user-friendly settings management spreadsheet, .NET API for settings access at runtime and custom ESB Resolver
- Templated bindings file processing that automatically targets multiple runtime environments from a single bindings file
- Full and Fast deployment modes to reduce development cycle time
- Detailed logging for informational and troubleshooting purposes
- Enables use of un-encoded XML for adapter and port configurations in binding files, allowing easy manual editing
- Single deployment script serves both development workstations and servers
- Automated packaging of entire application into standard Windows Installer MSI file
- Easily customizable installation wizard for server deployments
- Support for side-by-side deployment of multiple versions of a single application
- Deployment verification via NUnit unit testing tool
- Integrated deployment of Log4Net for runtime event logging
- Automated configuration of BizTalk runtime settings including debugging features and .NET assembly-to-AppDomain mappings
- Automatic creation/cleanup and NTFS permission assignment of FILE adapter physical paths
- Automated restart of one or more BizTalk host instances and IIS or selected AppPools
- Automatic addition of BizTalk application references
- Automatic deployment of debugging PDB files to the Global Assembly Cache (GAC)
- Infinite extensibility through open-source license
- Extensibility through user-defined MSBuild targets and tasks
- And more!
The diagram below illustrates the major components that make up the Deployment Framework:
Virtually all of the features mentioned above may be selectively enabled or disabled and easily customized to meet the particular requirements of your application.
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