Who would have believed that XML, such a seemingly trivial technology, could revolutionize an industry? It may have seemed like a long shot in the beginning, but the XML aficionados saw something special and pragmatic right away—a sort of duct tape for the world's information systems. But not all developers felt this way. Some were disappointed by the lack of tool support that would bring XML to life.

Given its place today, however, I don't think anyone could say that XML was all hype. It has revolutionized the way we think about distributed computing, given birth to Web services and service orientation, and continually spawns newer, better tools. One such tool, BizTalk^® Server 2004, is poised to finally bring some of XML's benefits to the masses by providing some long-awaited magic.

BizTalk State of Affairs
Theory vs. Reality
BizTalk Server Architecture
A Service-Oriented Foundation
Publish-Subscribe Engine
Contract-Driven Messaging
Port Extensibility
Wrap-Up

Suresh Behera