How to do workflow in BizTalk and what happens to HWS

I have long believed that we should see the current generation of BizTalk simply as an interim product. Things will change very significantly in 'the Longhorn timeframe' (approx. 50 years away, at this rate ;-)). Microsoft's demonstrations to date of WinOE (Windows Orchestration Engine) suggest major changes - perhaps the most obvious is the apparant dropping of XLANG/s. WinOE will act as a very general purpose engine for all kinds of workflow scenarios, including, of course, Office System-based human workflow.

Thanks for reaction, Charles.

I agree on the part that BizTalk will be replaced by WinOE eventually. But in the meantime BizTalk will be enhanced and supported. Apparently, that's less true for Human Workflow Services and that was new to me.

Hey Charles and Carlo,

Based on the public information, which is all we can discuss, I might have come to the same conclusions as you did when you said "BizTalk will be replaced by WinOE eventually".

In fact those conclusions are wrong. Given that lots of details are in the early stages (read under NDA) let me try and help you with a single post that takes the publically available information and combines it with an analogy.

Both the efforts mentioned above are those of the BizTalk Server team. Rest assured we have a continued product strategy for BizTalk Server over multiple releases and that the work we might do in the broader context complements/accelerates BizTalk Server rather than replacing it.

BizTalk Server has the #1 largest customer base in the integration industry and we want to keep it that way. BizTalk Server is not going away. Its actually quite the reverse -will be innovating heavily in the BPM, EAI and B2B space.

An interesting analogy for you to ponder with respect to the two efforts above might be:

You can't drive a car without a fuel combusting engine, but a fuel combusting engine is not a car. Further it takes a really good mechanic, or many of them, to make a modern car starting with just a fuel combusting engine - adding the electronic systems, the braking systems, the tires, axles, shell of the car etc.

From a different perspective, If I'm a truck manufacturer then my customers are more likely to buy my trucks if they run on well regarded fuel combustion engines from specialist fuel combustion companies rather than a custom engine I might build. Also its probably more cost effective for me to stick with my core competency of building trucks than building fuel combustion engines.

From a third perspective, If I want to pick up the kids from rugby in my car, or haul a load of soil in my truck I'm not in the market for a fuel combustion engine - I want to buy either a car or a truck.

Obviously things are very early and actually there are interesting innovations in BizTalk Server that preceed the above. See you at Longhorn/Server and stay tuned for more details over the coming year.

P.S. There is an interesting job for the right person on my blog if you want to be right in the middle of all this innovation.

Go BizTalk Server!

Thanks Scott. I didn't know they played rugby in the US. We Brits are convinced that American football is really just a rugby substitute with padding (please direct all flame to Carl's blog site, not mine) :-)

Seriously though, as I am not under NDA, my interpretation of your analogies is that WinOE should be understood as just that - an engine. BizTalk, we can speculate, is likely to be built upon this engine in future, but will offer a full and robust messaging and bpi infrastructure. Other products may also share the same engine, but exploit it for different purposes.

This was already my understanding of the situation. By describing the current generation of BizTalk as 'interim', I mean simply that there are likely to be some major plumbing changes to the product when WinOE comes along. For example, a careful study of the slideware from PDC presentations of WinOE suggests that XLANG/s may become a thing of the past. I don't expect you to comment on that, of course.

Carl's blog is about the future of HWS. I would speculate that HWS has no future in the WinOE world, simply because other human workflow functionality will emerge based on the same engine as BizTalk.

Ooops. My colleague, Duncan, has just pointed out that Scott hails from New Zealand. I take back all comments about rugby - esp. as the All Blacks have tended to beat the English in most of their encounters!!

It is a disappointment for me because we are developing a project on the core of biztalk and hws. if this technology is going to be replaced with other, that what will happen to the earlier work that has been done