Host Integration, BizTalk Adapters CTP Now Available

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Very nice job by the Host Integration Server team for getting both the
HIS 2006 CTP and BizTalk Adapters for Host Systems CTP out on
schedule.

This CTP release (code name "Dawson") really demonstrates some great innovations for making IBM-interop a reality on .NET 2.0 systems.
Host Integration Server is actually one of the most senior products for Microsoft, starting in the 90s as SNA Server. Let's see what's
new in both HIS 2006, and the fancy new BizTalk Adapters for Host Systems.

So what's in this HIS release? Some highlights include:

  • New network services such as Host Print Service, and Session Integrator for both 3270 screen-scraping apps, and 4600 for financial apps
  • Transaction Integrator for creating .NET proxies for COBOL or RPG code sitting on the IBM hardware
  • Tight integration with VS.NET 2005 for importing COBOL/RPG code and building HIS projects
  • Single Sign On improvements such as password synchronization and MIIS management for SSO.
  • Great new .NET data providers for DB2 and Host Files. The Host Files piece is really amazing. Being able to access this data
    from within your .NET application is compelling.

How about the BizTalk Adapters? This really is 4 separate offerings. Some highlights include:

  • BizTalk Adapter for Host Applications. This lets you connect natively between BizTalk and IBM host apps (e.g. CICS). These actually
    use wire-level protocols over either SNA or TCP/IP.
  • BizTalk Adapter for Host Files. Imagine having solicit-response or even polling of Host Files as integration options in your
    BizTalk project. Wow.
  • BizTalk Adapter for DB2. Now you can easily connect from BizTalk to DB2 databases just as simply as any other data store.
  • BizTalk Adapter for WebSphere MQ. Connect BizTalk with MQSeries Queue Managers. Nice.

Just a very interesting offering that we're providing. Getting those BizTalk adapters at no additional cost is a huge savings to customers, and
really a fascinating way to create a Service Oriented Architecture that easily interacts with a whole host (pun intended) of systems.

Technorati Tags: BizTalk, HIS

Comments

  • Anonymous
    May 12, 2006
    I was wondering if you have succeeded in importing RPG for a HIP call?  I have not been able to create the TIM manually or by Import and have it work.  We use HIS 2K4 and we can get everything to work there.  I have been able to get a WIP call and the DB2 adapter to work.  Man are they sweet.

    Thanks,

    Todd
  • Anonymous
    May 14, 2006
    Hey there Todd.  Haven't done a HIP call yet with these adapters.  In fact, it's still a "to do" for me to download the IBM DB2 Express edition for testing against.
  • Anonymous
    October 13, 2006
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    October 13, 2006
    Hey Nikhil, I don't know of a HIS team blog that we have.  Not sure what we've said publicly on a release date, but it's definitely this quarter, and hopefully released in the next few weeks.  The upgrade from HIS 2000 and HIS 2004 is fairly painless up to 2006, so your customer should be able to upgrade from any previous version (even including SNA 4.0!) without much grief.