Host Integration, BizTalk Adapters CTP Now Available

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Very nice job by the Host Integration Server team for getting both the
HIS 2006 CTP and BizTalk Adapters for Host Systems CTP out on
schedule.

This CTP release (code name "Dawson") really demonstrates some great innovations for making IBM-interop a reality on .NET 2.0 systems.
Host Integration Server is actually one of the most senior products for Microsoft, starting in the 90s as SNA Server. Let's see what's
new in both HIS 2006, and the fancy new BizTalk Adapters for Host Systems.

So what's in this HIS release? Some highlights include:

  • New network services such as Host Print Service, and Session Integrator for both 3270 screen-scraping apps, and 4600 for financial apps
  • Transaction Integrator for creating .NET proxies for COBOL or RPG code sitting on the IBM hardware
  • Tight integration with VS.NET 2005 for importing COBOL/RPG code and building HIS projects
  • Single Sign On improvements such as password synchronization and MIIS management for SSO.
  • Great new .NET data providers for DB2 and Host Files. The Host Files piece is really amazing. Being able to access this data
    from within your .NET application is compelling.

How about the BizTalk Adapters? This really is 4 separate offerings. Some highlights include:

  • BizTalk Adapter for Host Applications. This lets you connect natively between BizTalk and IBM host apps (e.g. CICS). These actually
    use wire-level protocols over either SNA or TCP/IP.
  • BizTalk Adapter for Host Files. Imagine having solicit-response or even polling of Host Files as integration options in your
    BizTalk project. Wow.
  • BizTalk Adapter for DB2. Now you can easily connect from BizTalk to DB2 databases just as simply as any other data store.
  • BizTalk Adapter for WebSphere MQ. Connect BizTalk with MQSeries Queue Managers. Nice.

Just a very interesting offering that we're providing. Getting those BizTalk adapters at no additional cost is a huge savings to customers, and
really a fascinating way to create a Service Oriented Architecture that easily interacts with a whole host (pun intended) of systems.

Technorati Tags: BizTalk, HIS