Microsoft's BizTalk Initiative

Define the organizations. You first need to define a default organization for BTS in BizTalk Management Desk. (The first organization you define for BTS becomes the default organization, which is usually your organization. If you define a trading partner first, that organization will be the default organization. After you've defined more than one organization, you can change the default organization. The source organization uses the defined default organization when you create new inbound or outbound agreements and pipelines.) To define a default organization, click Select in the Default Organization section in the BizTalk Management Desk interface's left pane, then click New in the resulting Select an Organization window. In the Organization Editor window that pops up, you define a new default organization by specifying an organization name, addresses (e.g., HTTP, FTP, email addresses that documents from trading partners will use), and application names in the appropriate fields. In the example, the default organization is E-Seller, the address is an HTTP address—http://biztalk.e-seller .com/ReceiveStandard.asp—and the application name is Accounting. You use the same method to define other organizations, such as your customer, E-Buyer, but don't set the other organizations as the default organization.

Create a document definition. After you and your customer have agreed on an XML schema from the BizTalk schema library (e.g., the schema called PO from the BizTalk Web site) for the purchase order document, save the schema in a directory of document definitions. For storing document definitions, BTS provides the default directory \Program Files\Microsoft BTSBizTalkServerRepository\DocSpecs. Next, use BizTalk Editor to import the schema. Select Import from the Tools menu, and choose XML-Data Schema as the import module. Find the schema file you saved and open it, then save the imported schema as a document definition file named PO Spec in the directory of document definitions.

Define an inbound agreement. Before you define an inbound agreement, copy the ReceiveStandard.asp file from \Program Files\Microsoft BizTalk Server\Samples to the Microsoft IIS default directory \Inetpub\wwwroot. BTS 2000 provides a standard ASP script to receive documents using HTTP. In the BizTalk Management Desk interface, click the leftmost toolbar icon (i.e., a page icon) and click Agreement. In the resulting Agreement Editor window, which Figure 4 shows, type the inbound agreement name in the Agreement name field (e.g., Inbound PO from E-Buyer). By default, the default organization E-Seller is the source when you create a new agreement. To change the source to E-Buyer, click the Source icon, then select E-Buyer. Agreement Editor will automatically use the default organization E-Seller as the destination after you change the source.

Next, you must specify the document definition and transport service that the agreement will use. To do so, click the Document Definition icon and select the document definition PO Spec. Click the Transport icon and specify the transport service, which uses HTTP and the address http://biztalk.e-seller.com/Receive Standard.asp. Then, save this inbound agreement as a complete agreement. The BTS preview version doesn't let you modify the source and destination after you've created and saved an agreement. (You can see that these options are shaded in Figure 4.) In addition, the preview version doesn't let you delete a saved agreement. However, I believe Microsoft will address these problems in the final release of BTS.

Define an outbound agreement. If you want to configure BTS to deliver received documents to an internal accounting application, you need to find out whether your application's vendor provides its AIC for BTS before you define an outbound agreement. For example, SAP offers SAP R/3 AIC for BTS. If your application's vendor doesn't provide an AIC for BTS, you must write an AIC for the application. (A software developer can use BTS's software development kit—SDK—and Microsoft Visual Basic— VB—or C++ to program an AIC. The BTS SDK provides a list of interfaces and objects that let the developer customize and extend BTS's functionality.) In BTS, you register the AIC from the vendor or software developer. (Microsoft's BTS manual details how to develop and register an AIC for BTS.)

The procedure to define an outbound agreement is similar to that for an inbound agreement. You name the agreement (e.g., Outbound PO to Accounting), provide the source organization (e.g., E-Seller), and type the destination (e.g., an accounting application). To define the destination, click the Destination icon, select E-Seller from the pop-up list of organizations, and select Accounting as the application. The document definition is the same PO Spec that you used for the inbound agreement, and the transport service is the AIC.

The Agreement Editor interface includes two optional icons: Envelope and Security. BTS envelopes are analogous to post-mail envelopes. You can use BizTalk Management Desk to create an envelope by specifying an envelope format, such as custom XML or X12, then associate the envelope with an agreement by clicking the Envelope icon in the Agreement Editor window. BTS uses the envelope in outbound agreements to encapsulate the outbound documents and in the inbound agreement to open the envelope that encapsulates the inbound documents. If you don't define an envelope for an agreement, BTS uses the XML format by default. The optional security setting lets BTS use encryption and digital signature functionality when sending and receiving documents.

Create a pipeline. To create a pipeline for the purchase order delivery, highlight the outbound agreement Outbound PO to Accounting on the list of agreements in the BizTalk Management Desk interface. Select New from the File menu, click Pipeline, and provide a new pipeline name (e.g., PO from E-Buyer to E-Seller's Accounting) in the resulting Pipeline Editor window, which Figure 7 shows. Click the Source icon, then select the organization E-Buyer as the source. Next, click the Inbound Document Definition icon and select the document definition PO Spec. (BTS can associate multiple document definitions with an agreement. Select only the document definition that you need for a specific document delivery flow in a pipeline.) Click the Outbound Document Definition icon, then select the same document definition PO Spec.

The pipeline in this example uses the same document definition for both inbound and outbound agreements, so you don't need to define a map for it. Otherwise, you have to use BizTalk Mapper to create a map file. To use a different transport service than the one that the outbound agreement defines, click the Override Transport Defaults icon and provide the new transport service information.

Related Articles in Previous Issues

You can obtain the following articles from Windows 2000 Magazine's Web site at http://www.win2000mag.com/. KEN SPENCER "Using XML to Build Internet Solutions," April 1999, InstantDoc 5056 BOB WELLS Scripting Solutions, "Extensible Markup Language," April 2000, InstantDoc 8314

The Pipeline Editor lets you define pipeline filtering that instructs BTS to process only the received documents that meet filtering criteria (e.g., the PO payment type is a credit card). You can also configure a pipeline to tell BTS to log certain fields from inbound documents to the tracking database. Using this feature, you can track and analyze your business operation (e.g., discover the total number of orders for specific equipment).

An E-Commerce Voice
BizTalk provides a platform that enables B2B e-commerce and automatic business processes within an organization and over the Internet to other companies. After you build BizTalk-aware applications and BTS systems in your network and define documents' BizTalk XML schemas with your trading partners, BizTalk can do the talking for your e-commerce business.