Professional BizTalk® Server 2006

Chapter 11. Administration

So the BizTalk application has been developed, and you've successfully completed the functional and nonfunctional testing and have followed all the advice laid out in this book; time to relax, then? Well, actually no. Although the initial development phase is complete, the business is only just about to receive payback for all that investment and hard work.

In order for that to happen, the application needs to meet current and future performance requirements, as well as internal and external service-level agreements. As the initial chapters of this book explained, BizTalk is a resilient technology that can be used to solve common business problems; it provides much of the required plumbing out of the box. It also tends to be used in scenarios involving data that is critical to the successful running of the business, therefore it needs to be maintained appropriately.

Much of my time is spent reviewing customers' designs and deployments of BizTalk — that is, trying to prevent problems. The rest of my time is spent fixing reactive problems for customers. Unfortunately, many problems that occur would have been preventable if the best practices had been followed.

This chapter will cover the best practices that should be followed. This includes the main things to be aware of in any BizTalk deployment; including the common pitfalls and the tasks you should be performing on a regular basis. The chapter explains the underlying reasons why these practices need ...