What this book covers

Chapter 1, Building BizTalk Server 2013 Applications, looks at what exactly BizTalk Server is, reviews the core architecture of the application, and shows you how to build an end-to-end solution.

Chapter 2, Windows Communication Foundation Primer, looks at the problems that WCF attempts to solve, and how to actually build and host WCF services.

Chapter 3, Using WCF Services in BizTalk Server 2013, builds a number of common scenarios using BizTalk and WCF services.

Chapter 4, REST and JSON Support in BizTalk Server 2013, covers the fundamentals of REST-based services and the BizTalk WCF-WebHttp adapter.

Chapter 5, Azure BizTalk Services, looks at one of the newer integration offerings from Microsoft, reviews how it works, and shows how to build an end-to-end solution. Although this platform has been superseded by Azure Logic Apps while we were writing this book, we decided to keep this chapter for historical completeness.

Chapter 6, Azure Service Bus, discusses the different types of services available and the characteristics of each type. You will also learn about creating Azure Topics and Subscriptions.

Chapter 7, Planning Service-oriented BizTalk Solutions, investigates exactly what a service-oriented BizTalk solution looks like. What types of services you should expose. How you can exchange messages through the BizTalk bus. We'll answer these questions and many more at this stage of the book.

Chapter 8, Schema and Endpoint Patterns, explores various patterns for building schemas and endpoints, and discusses what scenarios each pattern is applicable to.

Chapter 9, Asynchronous Communication Patterns, looks at how to take advantage of asynchronous messaging to build robust service-oriented solutions. We'll also cover the tricky concept of providing acknowledgements or results to clients that call services in a fire-and-forget fashion.

Chapter 10, Orchestration Patterns, explores advanced patterns used to build loosely-coupled orchestrations that cater for advanced functionality without compromising flexibility.

Chapter 11, Versioning Patterns, covers proven methods to version your BizTalk components, ensuring that you don't introduce changes that will cause unintended disruption.

Chapter 12, Frameworks and Tools, introduces you to a variety of tools and frameworks that can be leveraged to support your SOA aspirations.

Chapter 13, New SOA Capabilities in BizTalk Server 2013 – Azure Hybrid Patterns, covers the pros and cons of hybrid solutions. This chapter also describes the different integration patterns available when connecting on-premise resources to the resources hosted in the cloud.

Chapter 14, What's New and What's Next?, will touch upon some of the latest offerings from Microsoft, cover how they are relevant to you, and give you a taste of how to implement solutions with these platforms.