BizTalk 2013/2013 R2 new versions: New and Deprecated Features

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New Features!
• Support for new versions of Windows OS, SQL Server, and Visual Studio | Hardware and Software Requirements for BizTalk Server 2013 and 2013 R2
• Support for JSON Sending and receiving JSON messages; we also have a wizard to generate XSD schema from a JSON instance. There is also an Encoder and Decoder component to use with custom pipelines | Processing JSON messages using BizTalk Server
• Updates to the SB-Messaging adapter: SB Messaging adapter is enhanced to support SAS (Shared Access signature) based authentication, in addition to ACS. With this new improvement, BizTalk Server can now also interact with the on-prem edition of Service Bus. For more information | SB-Messaging Adapter
• Updates to the SFTP adapter: SFTP adapter now supports two-factor authentication and provides an option to specify a temporary folder while uploading/downloading large files. You can also select the Encryption cipher value specific to your target server | SFTP Adapter
• Updates to HL7 Accelerator HL7 Accelerator now supports: Capability to include free-text data as part of the message that can be processed by the HL7 pipelines; 64-bit support for hosting Hl7 adapter | BizTalk Accelerator for HL7.
• BizTalk Health Monitor BizTalk Health Monitor is a new BizTalk snap-in that helps monitor the health of your BizTalk Server environment. This snap-in can be added to the existing BizTalk Administration Console or can be run individually.
•Generate and view a health report
•Dashboard view for overall health of BizTalk environment
•Send e-mail notifications
•Schedule report collection
•Performance monitor integration with pre-loaded scenario-based performance counters
•Monitor multiple BizTalk environments
•Report management

We are going to share more details in a future post for this new feature, BizTalk Health Monitor, that is a great resource for BizTalk Administrators.

Now, let's talk about the Modified Features, some of them are Deprecated and others are Removed. By Removed, we mean there is no replacement; so take in consideration they are Out Of Support. For the following list, for the Deprecated ones, you should consider evaluating your solution and replacing the logic implementing the replacements instead. As usual we recommend, testing on a Development Environment, measure against stress tests trying to emulate the most that you can, the daily workload you are going to face on the Production Environment.
• RFID Mobile is Removed on this new version, but RFID Server is Deprecated, there is no Replacement.
• Other Deprecated Features are:
•SharePoint SSOM/Web Service adapter, you can replace this by using CSOM (Client Side Object Model) option;
• Check the following Articles:
Windows SharePoint Services Adapter
Install the Microsoft SharePoint Adapter
•SOAP adapter, replaced by WCF-BasicHttp Adapter
•Old SQL adapter, replaced by WCF-based SQL adapter in the BizTalk Adapter Pack