How does BizTalk Server make requests of Salesforce.com or Force.com applications? We have a couple of viable choices: third-party adapters or invoking the native web service API.
There are a number of adapters built by vendors to accelerate integration with Salesforce.com. By using an adapter, developers do not need to learn underlying APIs and can avoid building extension functions to work around API shortcomings. One such adapter is the TwoConnect BizTalk Adapter for Salesforce.com which supports both push and pull interaction patterns. One of the valuable features of an adapter such as this is that it can poll Salesforce.com in a BizTalk Server receive location. There is no way to easily and reliably poll a web service endpoint with native BizTalk adapters.
As much as adapters can quicken development and introduce useful wrapper capabilities on underlying system APIs, the increasing prevalence of available web service interfaces on enterprise...