wf4 and Biztalk

Question

Hi,

I am trying to find out what is the relationship between WF4 and Biztalk. So far I've found conflicting information, some saying that WF will become the foundation for Biztalk, some talk of adapters that you can use, and some saying that this might or might not happen.

Could anyone shed light on this? 

Thanks, 

Robert

Answer 1

Hi Robert,

Back in 2005 when WF was first made public (It was WWF at the time), it was mentioed that WF will replace XLANGs orchestrations in the next major BizTalk Server release, and WCF will be used as the adapter framework.

We have seen some adoption of WCF as the adapter framework with the new adapters in the BizTalk Adapter Pack. As these adapters are based on WCF rather than the BizTalk API, then you can use them from any .NET application, including WF workflows.

As for WF replacing XLANGs orchestraions, there has been no news regarding that since the original claims back in 2005. This is not to say that WF will never be part of BizTalk, there is a chance that this may happen in a later version, but with around 10,000 customers using the XLANGs orchestraions technology, there will no doubt be support for this available for a long time.


Regards,

Alan

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Answer 2

Thank you Alan for the clarification! 

Answer 3

Roberti, and anyone else interested, there are two sessions at PDC which might be of interest where we will be talking about some of the things we will be up to in the future:

Microsoft BizTalk Server Futures and Roadmap

Microsoft Application Server Technologies: Present and Future

matt

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Program Manager -- wf designer -- http://blogs.msdn.com/mwinkle