BizTalk vNext features or WF/WCF vnext features?

Look at the next version of BizTalk 2009 R2, coming soon, and then think what else would I like to see...

Then understand that the team that wrote BizTalk is the same team that made WF and WCF.

I'd turn it around to say, look at WF and WCF where the bulk of the effort is. What would I like to see here, as post Dublin we finally have a product that works, with nice hosting and manageability. This is really the way to go. .

So ask what you would like to see more of in this stack. As it's still not 100% usable, and very clunky in areas here BizTalk is seamless.

I'd like to see a mapper that works for WCF endpoints. Defined for contracts, to map incoming formats into that of the contract.

This would involve identifying the incoming format first, like matching it to a different contract/schema, for the map, and then applying the transformation. Sounds a lot like a BizTalk port.

Then mapping inside of WF, to construct an outgoing message from a different incoming format.

WF is far tooo clunky for this...

You will see more ws-* wcf adapters, however the other features, like debug orch in vs, never going to happen. It's already there in wf so why put it in BizTalk....

I've been waiting for that new mapper I saw 3 years ago to appear in BizTalk, still no sign of it....

Where does Dublin, WF and WCF fit with BizTak going forward?

I previously spoke about where BizTalk and Dublin (Insert Name), WF and WCF all fit…. Well here is my view.

As far as where does Dublin fit here I can only touch on this, Dublin could host the workflow, much like BizTalk hosts the orchestration and the communication to end points. Dublin workflows could call BizTalk to kick off the back end communication and orchestration process, and get a result when they are done. In this way the workflow/human workflow can interact with back end systems, in a correctly architected manner, you can of course cut the corners here and call wcf services hosted, not a good idea, you could call back end oriented workflows that would be hosed in Dublin. WF can’t talk to SharePoint, and it perhaps can’t talk to many back end systems, whose functionality live in BizTalk. For example WF can’t send a fax.

There are a few fax adapters that can. WF can’t map a document from one format to the format that the end system is expecting; it has no concept of this. WCF can’t do this, and WF can’t do this. BizTalk will be here for few more years still.