WCF 4.0, WF 4.0, and Dublin vs Biztalk 2009

Question

Folks,
  I'm looking at various ways of putting together a multi-tier architecture involving services and I'm looking at two options and I'm unclear on where the real value is. On the one hand, I look at services hosted in workflows hosted in Dublin and I see the ability to create something that is close to an ESB but not quite. I can script all of my transactional business logic into workflows that can be poked and prodded via WCF endpoints.

However, I then look at Biztalk 2009 and it's ability to act as an "on ramp" (terminology not mine) for an ESB, complete with the ability to expose WCF endpoints that talk to Biztalk orchestrations and I'm left wondering.. which is the more robust solution? Why would one pick the .NET 4.0 "biztalkless" solution over the .NET 3.5 SP1 biztalk solution? (or would they?)

Hopefully someone who is more knowledgeable in this area can enlighten me and hopefully send me down the right path :)

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The .NET Addict - http://dotnetaddict.dotnetdevelopersjournal.com

Answer 1

Hi Kevin,

I'm wondering if you have seen the recently released ESB Toolkit for BizTalk Server 2009 here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/biztalk/dd876606.aspx

Will this help you to make your decision?  Let me know, if this doesn't help out I will engage someone else to help you out here.

Regards,

Ed

Answer 2

Hi,

This is a hot topic at the moment, but I think it's a bit too early to take sides. BizTalk is a well established product, and the ESB toolkit has been around for a while. This makes it the only real option at the moment.

The combination of WCF/WF/Dublin looks to provide some interesting options for developing and hosting durable services, but as it is still early in the product cycle (pre-beta for Dublin), it  will be a while before it is going to be a valid option.

I think that WCF/WF/Dublin will be more serivce oriented, whilst BizTalk is more integration focussed, but this a simple answer to a complex problem.

There are a few wabcasts covering both the ESB Toolkitand Dublin here: http://www.cloudcasts.net/

That should give you a flavour of what each is about.

Regards,

Alan

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