BizTalk Server's Role in Other Data Exchange Needs
Although BizTalk Server can help organizations solve their business needs, there are many data transactions within an organization or between organizations that are not necessarily going to be facilitated better by BizTalk. Using the right tool for the right job is important in ensuring the successful implementation of the solution.
What Would You Use if BizTalk Server Did Not Exist
For organizations just beginning to build their B2B and EAI environments, having a solution like BizTalk Server makes sense as an immediate B2B/EAI solution.
However, for organizations already using some type of business solution, the issue relative to conversion becomes important to know what BizTalk Server can and cannot do.
Some typical B2B business transaction systems used in place of BizTalk Server include customized Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) solutions, Direct Point-to-Point Connected Transactions systems, Custom APIs configurations, HTTP Web-based Direct Entry solutions, File Transfer Protocol (FTP) procedures, and Fax/Mail Data Entry systems. All these traditional technologies are discussed in the following sections.
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)
EDI is a system that provides a set series of parameters that organizations can use to electronically exchange data with each other. Several EDI templates define field names that an organization would agree on that need to be exchanged, such as part number, description, quantity, unit price, extended price, and so on. Two or more organizations would agree on which fields to exchange.
After the fields are agreed on, the organization would set up or contract with a VAN that is the intermediary that accepts incoming EDI information and transports the information to the agreed on destination. Both the sending and receiving organizations acknowledge their transmissions as well as receive confirmations of the completed transaction.
EDI is frequently implemented on the BizTalk Server to provide an interim standard for communications between two existing business trading partners. However, after an XML-based transfer script is set up, the organizations could change from communicating via the VAN of EDI data to conducting business transactions over a secured connection on the Internet directly to each other. In practice, BizTalk Server does not necessarily replace EDI altogether, but rather organizations using EDI can implement BizTalk Server and send transactions over nonproprietary Internet standard transports or VANs, and eliminate costly EDI translators.
Direct Point-to-Point Connected Transactions
Organizations that want to ensure a higher level of security or organizations where the transmit and receive software does not have built-in security safeguards may find that it requires a point-to-point connection between them and their business partners. From an internetworking perspective, the connection may be a dedicated lease line or a frame relay line. However, in any case, the connection links two or more organizations by the way of a physical connection to and from the sites.
A direct connected transaction link has the advantage of scaling transmission speed and throughput based on the needs (and the budget) of the organization. Because the connection is typically paid for on a flat monthly fee as opposed to a per-session or per-packet of transmitted data like a VAN or other proprietary connection, an organization can use 56 KB, 256 KB, half-T1 (768 KB), full-T1 (1.54 MB), or faster link speeds 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This availability in communication bandwidth provides the organization a significant amount of flexibility in transmitting or even streaming large sets of data between sites.
The reason an organization using this solution may choose to standardize on a BizTalk Server type solution is the cost of connected link. Although connection to a single business partner within a few miles of the host organization may only cost $300–$500 per month, lease lines become expensive over long distances ($1000–$5000 per month domestically, $3000–$15,000 per month internationally). Also, the cost of a lease line connection is charged “per site,” so an organization that wants to connect to 100 locations will pay 10 times more than the cost of connecting to just 10 locations. This linear cost becomes extremely expensive as the organization expands its market share and market reach.
Custom APIs
After an organization selects a method of transmission, the format of communication between sites needs to be determined. One method is creating custom programming scripts using the Application Programmer Interface (API) published by the application software of the two organizations' software programs. An organization can conceivably have a custom application written that provides the sending party and the receiving party a method of exchanging information.
Writing custom API applications between trading parties or internal to an organization has been a necessity in most cases in the past where applications have had few options for exporting or importing information across disparate systems. However, because every system requires a custom application to be written, it becomes expensive, and it can take weeks or months to connect the organizations' systems.
By standardizing on a system like BizTalk Server that has tools to exchange information between business partners, it is much faster to interconnect systems.
HTTP Web-Based Direct Entry
In the past two to three years, organizations have provided their business partners with Web-based look-up and entry tools so that users can gain real-time access to price, availability, and other information. However, although these solutions provide direct access to information, performance is limited to the speed of the site-to-site connection. When multiple users in a single site want to access information stored on a server hosted in another site, user access has no performance gains because each session is independent of the other. All the Web-based direct entry system does is offload the entry process from the supplier to the buyer. Suppliers typically want to burden the customer the least to provide valuable customer service and to retain the business from that customer, so Web-based direct entry systems do little to improve customer satisfaction.
For organizations that have high activity of information look-up between business partners, having a dedicated system extract and transmit information between the business partners allows for a local copy of data to be stored on the LAN of the trading partner. This transfer of selected information using a BizTalk Server can drastically minimize the amount of time a user might normally take to access her existing Web-based solution.
File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
The file transfer protocol (FTP) is a common method for organizations to exchange information. One organization sets up an FTP server and provides a logon and password to the other organizations to send or receive files. The files could be updated product catalog information stored in a data file, it could be raw data prepared to be imported directly into a database, or the information could be a scanned image file or other document file containing purchase order type information. FTP transfers can be automated to allow the transfer of information to occur automatically at set times.
FTP does nothing to facilitate the management or synchronization of data with the data file, so if just a few of the objects in a dataset change, the entire data file needs to be FTP transferred rather than just a few objects. This greatly extends the amount of information that needs to be exchanged on a regular basis, whereas a system that exchanges data at the field level can make sure that the most current fields of information are updated regularly.
Fax/Mail with Manual Data Entry
The last common data exchange process used in business transactions is one where information is manually written or printed onto a form and faxed or mailed to another location where it is then manually keyed in to the database system. This process obviously has no electronic data exchange mechanism built-in and has the potential for data entry errors or other errors induced by a manual system.
When Is BizTalk Server Not the Right Solution?
Because BizTalk Server provides seamless system-to-system data interchange functionality, it is common to believe that BizTalk Server will provide virtually any type of data interchange service for an organization. There are, however, other tools that more commonly and more appropriately provide the data interchange tasks for specific functions much better. This includes using tools such as electronic messaging (e-mail) systems, file replication tools, or database system specific replication tools.
Ad Hoc Message Communications
For the ad hoc exchange of information between partners or business organizations that includes unformatted text or information frequently stored in different file formats, configurations, or settings, e-mail is frequently a better system to allow this form of data interchange. Most B2B interchange systems expect information exchanged between trading partners to be formatted in similar formats so that the information can be properly parsed with automated scripts properly extracting the right information from the data transfer.
XML-and SOAP-based transaction scripts can be created to analyze a file and extract specific sets of data from the file. Additionally, scripts can be created to even analyze the file format itself and apply an appropriate filter to the file. However, there are limitations in file format filters and data parsing filters that should be applied to an automated process before automated errors are induced to the system. To maintain better accuracy in the exchange of data, the more structured the transfer file format and content is, the better chance the system has to extract the right information from the exchange.
Data File Transfers
When an organization needs to replicate large sets of files between locations and not look specifically at the data contained within the files but rather just look at the time and date stamp of the file for relative changes to the file itself, the organization is more likely better off with a file replication tool, not a B2B interchange tool such as BizTalk Server. BizTalk Server can be configured to analyze entire file sets and exchange the information between servers and locations; however, BizTalk is better suited to taking structured data and transacting the information between locations.
Database-to-Database Replication
For most database systems, a built-in database replication process is either included or available for the database to analyze information within the database and synchronize the parts of the database that require duplication. Because BizTalk Server does not have the built-in tools to look into a database and analyze specific changed data content, it will not efficiently manage the replication of database content. An integrated replication tool for a specific database system keeps track of transactions sent and received between databases, handles duplicate records between datasets, handles aging and data conflicts, and typically has a roll back or roll forward mechanism to ensure that database information remains consistent.