Hi Folks,
I have come across a Service Bus platform, that might be an alternative if you cannot afford going Enterprise with BizTalk server in order to use the ESB Toolkit 2.0 and itinerary designer on/off ramps. As much as I love the toolkit, I am not allowed to use it at my work, unless I can convince them to go enterprise (Which I am going to do one day!)
So, what is NService Bus. This is their picture of it, taken from:
http://www.nservicebus.com/InsteadOfBizTalk.aspx
It seems to me that WCF, BizTalk and NServiceBus can get together and party. I am going to look into this product as soon as I can get some free time. It does look good on the outside. I also notice they on top of Azure with this one.
As soon as I get a prototype going, I will post an update!
Their main site is:
http://www.nservicebus.com/
Also, documentation is really good! Here is content from their main site in regards to nService Bus, WCF and BizTalk.
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Closer to WCF than to BizTalk
When many people hear the term "service bus" they picture a central box which all communication goes through, like BizTalk. That's actually a description of the Broker architectural style, not the Bus architectural style. A bus isn't necessarily a physical entity. In that respect, NServiceBus is more similar to WCF than it is to BizTalk.
There is no physical WCF one can point to in the network topology. WCF is part of the infrastructure that is run in-process with a given application's code. NServiceBus is the same.
Just like you can write your own host process and activate WCF explicitly within it, you can do the same thing with NServiceBus. The bus in NServiceBus is something virtual - the collection of framework objects running in the various applicative processes. You can think of it as a kind of peer-to-peer mesh that runs alongside your code as illustrated in the following diagram:
While there are additional stand-alone processes that come with NServiceBus (distributor, timeout manager, proxy, and gateway), they don't change this deployment model.
Similarities - the next generation
The similarities between the platforms continues into their next versions. The coming Windows Server "Dublin" technologies found in .net 4.0 bring a standard host for WCF/WF applications, message forwarding services, and scaling out stateful workflow applications. While version 1.9 of NServiceBus already provided scaling out long-running business processes, version 2.0 comes with a standard host also with the ability to run as a windows service, console, and forms application. In 1.9, the NServiceBus Proxy supported request/response message forwarding and in 2.0 will be able to forward publish/subscribe messaging as well.
What's the difference?
The principles which make NServiceBus as robust as it is are decades old. Proven to hold up through countless technological shifts, the queued messaging on which NServiceBus is based is more than just an implementation choice, it's a primary architectural concept. There's no such thing as a blocking call in NServiceBus.
As a general purpose communications technology, WCF does not enforce the queued messaging paradigm - NServiceBus does, and the architectural implications are profound.
When developing systems according to the traditional RPC techniques that WCF supports, it simple and straight-forward to get something working. That's when the problems start. Scalability and fault-tolerance are inherently hindered by RPC principles. At that point, it is close to impossible to solve these problems and even throwing more hardware at it has little effect. While WCF doesn't force developers down this path, it doesn't prevent them from doing so either. NServiceBus directs you away from these problems right from the beginning.
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You can also read more about inertoperability with BizTalk here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=b57b7625-7316-4f56-b88e-1fb685efae5b (Released March 2010).