Biztalk Server 2006 Review - Installation

I started this install on a Virtual PC and I was a bit skeptic if I would be able to finish installation that day , Configuring our development server last time required almost 3 days and another instance I remember configuring a machine with two SQL servers with Analysis server on a different machine almost took a week and a call to MS help desk for some gotcha's .So I was a bit skeptic





One of the first things that you will notice is that there is a set of ways to download all the pre-requisites. Often times in Biztalk Server 2004 , You will have to go and hunt lot of required files like SQL XML , MSXML 4 and SP1 and office Web Components Update and ... Oh You know what I mean . Now the cool thing in BTS 2006 is that you have an one click option of asking Biztalk to download whatever it wants directly off the web or download ONE Cab file containing everything in case your machine is not on the internet or in my case like a VPC




The next thing that one notices is that the whole installation is not one big piece of ALL or NOTHING , wherein some small change or issue would roll back the whole process and you need to go now and manually delete the BizTalk databases at times and that often leads the beginner Biztalk user to give up in frustration .. Also before installation it checks for pre-requisites and tell you what is available and not . Also it asks for one user credentials only if you have a single box scenario. rather than typing the same user name a zillion times




It also shows a smoother progress indication and unlike BTS 2004 , It shows you what is not installed and lets you reconfigure that piece alone later



Overall I must say I am impressed with the setup . The biztalk Server Explorer is completely revamped and
now there is a whole concept of artifacts grouped by applications ( Duh !!)
, our administrator's are already looking forward to Biztalk 200^