Entry

Can someone give some advantages and disadvantages of Biztalk?

Apr 12th, 2005 01:45
Balaji Ramachandran, http://eai.ittoolbox.com/documents/document.asp?i=2535

ADVANTAGES
- No third party software required

DISADVANTAGES
- Only runs on Microsoft/Intel platform
- Only supports XML Data Reduced (XDR) not XML Schema Definition (XSD)
- Repository only works with MS SQL
- Requires additional software to use certain features in BizTalk 2002, 
Microsoft Operations Manager & Application Center.

COMMENTS
Options to Scale-up, Scale-out and Massive-Scale Task Specialization 
require various versions of Windows 2000 one of which, Datacenter is 
only available through OEM and other software such as Application 
Center and Operations Manager. All which add complexity. BizTalk has 
lower initial software and hardware cost but as one scales up and out 
it loses its advantage.


2.0 Application Architecture 

ADVANTAGES
- Supports Publish & Subscribe
- Supports Computer Telephony Interface (CTI) through TAPI
- Browser Based Access
- 350+ adapters

DISADVANTAGES
- Hub and Spoke Architecture: When an application sends a document to 
the hub and five other applications want to consume the document, the 
document will have to be sent five times increasing network usage.
- Message transport limited to MSMQ & COM+
- Supports proprietary notation XLANG for process modeling
- Not UML compliant
- Requires additional software, Microsoft Operations Manager to send 
information to HP Open View via SNMP.


3.0 Network 

ADVANTAGES
- No proprietary remote access methods

DISADVANTAGES
- No clear disadvantages


4.0 Interfaces 

DISADVANTAGES
- Provides validation of WEDI/SNIP level 1 and 2 natively through the 
BizTalk HIPAA Accelerator. In order to provide validation for levels 3 
and 4 development of COM objects by Microsoft is required.


5.0 Performance 

DISADVANTAGES
- To use a server with 8-32 processors it requires Microsoft Windows 
2000 Datacenter, which must be purchased through an OEM.


6.0 Fault Tolerance 

DISADVANTAGES
- High Availability is through various versions of Windows 2000 and 
other software such as Application Center
- Backups are not automated
- Recovery is manual
- Fault Tolerance capabilities are supported through other Microsoft 
products

COMMENTS
In order to accomplish high availability, backups and recovery multiple
Microsoft products are required.


7.0 Customization 

ADVANTAGES
- Reusable elements are accessible through graphical tools

DISADVANTAGES
- Requires Application Center to automate deployment
- Importing & exporting is done through SQL server and not integrated 
into BizTalk
- Programs and data objects are stored on the file system or in the 
repository. No integration to Visual Source Safe
- Security, Import/Export and Administration capabilities are performed
through SQL Server and not integrated into BizTalk
- Repository can not be integrated with other repository tools
- Upgrade process sometimes requires a system reboot 


8.0 Support 

ADVANTAGES
- Major release once every 18 months
- Customer market demands dictate future features and functions
- Product tested on Microsoft Windows 2000 Server and Advanced Server
- Existing Premiere Support agreement to provide 24x7x365 support

DISADVANTAGES
- Product is not tested or certified on Microsoft Windows 2000 
Datacenter. Datacenter is required for scaling up over eight processors 
- Customer extension support is only provided for adapters. Support
will be provided by the support agreement or 3rd party partner with 
Microsoft


9.0 Security 

ADVANTAGES
- Supports X.509 certificates, PKI and Kerberos

DISADVANTAGES
- Relies on Windows and SQL security


10.0 Hybrid Platforms Policy

COMMENTS
Even though BizTalk can interact with homogenous networks, its biggest
limitation is its installation on Windows only servers.