Book Image

Microsoft BizTalk 2010: Line of Business Systems Integration

Book Image

Microsoft BizTalk 2010: Line of Business Systems Integration

Overview of this book

Microsoft BizTalk is an integration and connectivity server solution that allows businesses to connect disparate systems easily. In today’s business climate of mergers and acquisitions, more and more enterprises are forced to exchange data across disparate Line of Business systems using integration brokers like BizTalk Server 2010. What is often overlooked when integrating these systems is the pre-requisite knowledge that ERP and CRM systems demand in order to effectively integrate them. No longer is this knowledge locked up in the heads of expensive consultants. Gain an edge within your organization by developing valuable skills in the area of Line of Business integration from this book.This book will show you how to integrate BizTalk with Line of Business systems using practical scenarios. Each chapter will take a Line of Business system, introduce some pre-requisite knowledge and demonstrate how you can integrate BizTalk with that Line of Business system, and then provide guidance based upon real world experience, taking your BizTalk knowledge further.This book will enable you to master how to integrate BizTalk with Line of Business systems effectively. The book starts by highlighting the technical foundation of WCF-LOB adapters and the common steps and important properties pertaining to popular WCF-LOB adapters. You will then move on to an overview of how to integrate with Microsoft SQL Server using the WCF based SQL Server adapter. The book then dives into topics such as integrating BizTalk Server with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, building BizTalk/SAP integrated solutions using IDocs, the differences between IDocs and RFCs/BAPIs, and integrating BizTalk with Windows Azure AppFabric Service Bus amongst others.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Microsoft BizTalk 2010: Line of Business Systems Integration
Credits
Foreword
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Why Integrate Dynamics CRM and BizTalk Server?


There are numerous reasons to tie these two technologies together. Recall that BizTalk Server is an enterprise integration bus that connects disparate applications. There can be a natural inclination to hoard data within a particular application, but if we embrace real-time message exchange, we can actually have a more agile enterprise.

Consider a scenario when a customer's full "contact history" resides in multiple systems. The Dynamics CRM 2011 contact center may only serve a specific audience, and other systems within the company hold additional details about the company's customers. One design choice could be to bulk load that information into Dynamics CRM 2011 on a scheduled interval. However, it may be more effective to call out to a BizTalk Server service that aggregates data across systems and returns a composite view of a customer's history with a company.

In a similar manner, think about how information is shared between systems. A...