Mark Wilson I am the creator of TopXML. I am available for international and local (Australia) contracts. I am a Solution Architect/Business Analyst. I have worked in IT in several countries (NZ, Australia, South Africa, UK) building and training teams for government and very large non-governmental organizations. I am ex-Microsoft Consulting Services. I wrote the first book on Microsoft XML published in 2000 called XML Programming with VB and ASP. Most recently I have been building tools for the SEO industry. Ask me for a 37 point SEO health-checkup for your website.
The Business Document is an XML stream containing the business
transaction data. This transaction data may represent a purchase
order, invoice, sales forecast, or any other business information. A
Business Document forms the payload of a message. The Business
Document is also referred to as the body of the BizTalk
Message.
The BizTalk Framework does not prescribe the content or structure
(schema) of individual Business Documents. The details of the
Business Document content and structure, or Schema, are defined and agreed
upon by the solution implementers.
Schema
A Schema is the meta-data used to describe the content and structure of
a Business Document. Implemented in XML Data Reduced (XDR) today, and
in XML Schema when released by the W3C, this formal description is used by
application developers to create systems to process corresponding Business
Documents, or by parsers that validate a Business Document's conformance to
the Schema at runtime.
Organizations may publish their Schemas in the library on http://www.biztalk.org, or through other
means.
NOTE: Schemas for business documents do not contain any
BizTags, as described in this specification. A schema contains only
those tags required to support the business transaction, as designed by the
publishing/implementing organization. General requirements and
guidelines for Schema implementations are defined in the BizTalk Schema
Guidelines document available on
http://www.biztalk.org/Resources/schemasguide.asp.
BizTags
BizTags are the set of XML tags (both mandatory and optional) that are
used to specify Business Document handling. The BizTags are added as
an XML envelope or wrapper for a Business Document by an application or
application adapter. They are processed by the BizTalk server, or by
other applications facilitating the document interchange.
BizTalk Document
A BizTalk Document is a Business Document with the handling
BizTags. It is a single well-formed XML stream.
BizTalk Message
A BizTalk Message is the unit of interchange between BizTalk servers.
BizTalk Messages are used to send BizTalk Documents, and any related files,
between BizTalk servers.
The details of the BizTalk Message's wire encoding are transport
specific. For example, an FTP transport may implement the message as
a single BizTalk Document in XML. Alternately, a HTTP implementation
may encode the BizTalk Document within a MIME message. Transport
specific implementation guides will be published in a separate
document.
BizTalk server
A BizTalk server is represented by the set of services providing the
processing functionality defined in the BizTalk Framework
specifications.
Application
An Application is the line of business system(s) where the business data
or logic are stored and executed. An application also includes any
additional adapters that may be required to emit or consume XML and
communicate with the BizTalk infrastructure.
The application, or the application adapter creates a BizTalk
document. This document is structured according to the schemas
published for both BizTalk messages and implementation-defined business
documents.
The application transmits the BizTalk document to the BizTalk
server.
The sending BizTalk server adds any required transport-specific envelope
information, and transmits the BizTalk message to the destination
server.
When the message is received by the destination BizTalk server, it may
be validated and staged for processing by the destination applications.
The logical application model for the BizTalk Framework is implemented
in layers. These logical layers include the Application (and
appropriate adapters), the BizTalk server, and Data Communications.
The application communicates with other applications by sending business
documents back and forth through BizTalk servers. These documents are
implemented according to the implementation defined in the
transport-specific message schema, and the supporting BizTalk Document
schema. Communication is facilitated by a BizTalk server, which
provides a defined set of services to the application. Multiple
BizTalk servers communicate with one another over a variety of data
communication protocols, such as HTTP or MSMQ. The BizTalk Framework
does not prescribe what these data communication protocols are, and is
independent of the implementation details of each.
The application is responsible for formatting BizTalk Documents and
submitting them to the BizTalk server. The server processes the
documents, and constructs BizTalk Messages as appropriate for the transport
protocol. The BizTalk server uses information contained in the
optional BizTags to determine the correct transport-specific destination
address(es). The server then hands the message to the data
communications layer for transmission to the destination BizTalk
server(s). The interfaces between the application, BizTalk server and
Data Communications layer are implementation-specific.
BizTalk Messages typically contain one BizTalk Document along with some
additional information used by a BizTalk server or application to handle
and process the document. A BizTalk Message is constructed as shown
in the diagram below.
Xlang
XLANG is the language (based on SLANG) which you visually build, using
the Visio-style environment. By dragging and dropping components, you
are visually build instructions to execute.
Microsoft calls it 'orchestration'. For those who worked with
Microsoft Site Server Commerce Edition, you will recognise the concept as
the 'pipeline editor' - however, this tool is far superior to the pitiful
pipeline editor. This is a significant tool where one can invoke COM
objects, respond to events, listen for events (such as a file being placed
into a file-share or for an email arriving).
For example, you could build instructions to receive an XML document and
transfer the document to a COM component and then make a decision based on
the results and output the document to a file share or email it to
someone!
This is some of the indication of the power and flexibility of XLANG.
