BizTalk 2013 and ReST

Posted: January 28, 2013  |  Categories: BizTalk Uncategorized
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I am presenting a session on BizTalk 2013 and Rest at BizTalk Saturday – BizTalk 2013 Hands on Days – Auckland on February 9th.

I was all set to write a summary of this topic but this morning I woke and found that Steef-Jan Wiggers has just written a very good summary entitled  Microsoft offers ReST Support in BizTalk Server 2013.  I decided to publish what I was half way through writing  because it presents a different slant on this topic.

My first attempt to consume a Restful service was for a project with  BizTalk 2006R2. This was before the the new WCF-WebHttp adapter was available and we could only use the WCF-Custom adapter . I acknowledge Craig Haiden who worked out how to use some custom behaviours and configure some dynamic WCF-custom adapters to do the job. I have previously described my own small contribution previously in this blog (Sending a PUT to a ReSTful service using BizTalk 2006R2).

It was refreshing to revisit this experience using the new development tools and adapters that come with BizTalk 2013 Beta. What took me days using BizTalk 2006R2 can be completed in hours with BizTalk 2013. I think that Microsoft have done a good job making Rest support in BizTalk easier with the impending release of BizTalk 2013.

Prompted by my new discoveries with BizTalk and Rest i decided to check out how many ReST API’s exist within NZ and then tried to use them within BizTalk. I was truly amazed at the number of companies and NZ government agencies that expose ReST API’s e.g. http://developer.trademe.co.nz/ and http://www.broadbandmap.govt.nz/rest-api/ . ReSTful services are now becoming ubiquitous because they are so easy for mobile devices to consume and it is only fitting that BizTalk also embraces support for this type of service. (Note to myself. I must really explore this part of the NZ market.)

Just to finish I will list the history of ReST support in BizTalk and pay some respect to the early pioneer bloggers who made all this possible . If I have missed something out please let me know. The number of blog posts on ReST and BizTalk started to explode in 2011 and I expected many more this year. I think this list shows that the need for ReST support in BizTalk has been growing and the support for ReST in BizTalk 2013 is very welcome by BizTalk developers.

 

BizTalk

Version

ReST

Support

Details

2002

No

No WCF adapters.

2004

No

No WCF adapters.

2006

No

No WCF adapters.

2006R2

Yes (consume only)

7 Dec 2007 -Jon Flanders showed in a video how you can use a WCF-custom adapter to create a custom solution. Unfortunately this historic link is now dead. http://web.archive.org/web/20071222132830/http://www.masteringbiztalk.com/blogs/jon/PermaLink,guid,90f1db62-b42f-4be3-b9d7-36cd4319c97c.aspx

24 Apr 2008 – Jesus Rodriguez described how you can use HTTP adapters to consume ReSTful services using AtomPub.

http://weblogs.asp.net/gsusx/archive/2008/04/24/consuming-restful-services-from-biztalk-server-using-atompub.aspx

28 Oct 2009 – Paul Arundel sending via ReST to Azure Blob storage http://bitsinout.blogspot.co.nz/2009/10/using-biztalk-wcf-custom-adapter-to.html

2009

Yes(

consume only)

2 Mar 2010 – Jesus Rodriguez talks about experimental BizTalk ReST API’s

http://weblogs.asp.net/gsusx/archive/2010/03/02/biztalk-data-services-making-biztalk-more-restful-with-odata.aspx

2010

Yes

14 Mar 2011 – Adrian Lopez & Leandro Díaz described how that call ReST Service form BizTalk 2010

http://www.logue.com.ar/blog/2011/03/calling-rest-services-from-biztalk-server-2010/

16 Mar 2011 – Nitin Mehrota wrote how to Invoke ReSTful Web Services with BizTalk Server 2010

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/2474.invoke-restful-web-services-with-biztalk-server-2010.aspx#ReST_MessageInspector

14 Mar 2011 – Adrian Lopez & Leandro Díaz described how that call ReST Service from BizTalk 2010

14 Apr 2011 – Dave Sampson published a post using ReST with WCF-Custom Adapter and a wrapped text message encoder

http://dave-sampson.blogspot.co.nz/2011/04/adventures-with-biztalk-http-get-part-5.html

12 May 2011 – Nick McCready show cased an example using the WCF-custom adapters with code example.

http://codemonkeyseedo.blogspot.co.nz/2011/05/biztalk-to-wcf-data-services-part-2-wcf.html

11 June 2011 – Mark Brimble wrote about sending a put to a ReSTful service

http://connectedpawns.wordpress.com/2011/06/12/sending-a-put-to-a-restful-service-using-biztalk-2006r2/

11 July 2011 – Vishal Mody wrote about polling a ReSTful service using the scheduled task adapter.

http://geekswithblogs.net/BizTalkUnleashed/archive/2011/07/11/restful-service-polling-biztalk-receive-location.aspx

24 October 2011 – Magnus Ohlsson wrote about using ReST, BizTalk and mobile devices.

http://soapfault.com/blog/2011/10/connecting-android-and-biztalk-using-azure-appfabric-servicebus-queues-rest-and-wcf/

7 March 2012 – Mikael Håkansson wrote about exposing JSON/ReST endpoints from BizTalk. This post has now been superseded.

http://blogical.se/blogs/mikael/archive/2012/03/07/exposing-json-rest-endpoints-from-biztalk.aspx

28 May 2012 – Mikael Håkansson published ReST starter kit providing support for GET, POST, PUT and DELETE operation, for both Receive and Send ports together with support for both XML and JSON.

http://blogical.se/blogs/mikael/archive/2012/05/28/rest-start-kit-for-biztalk-server.aspx

22 Aug 2012 – Daniel Toomey published slideshow about ReST and BizTalk

http://www.slideshare.net/dtoomey/consuming-rest-services-in-biztalk-2010

18 Sep 2012 – Saravana Kumar showed us how consume a JSON endpoint with BizTalk

http://blogs.biztalk360.com/consuming-json-endpoint-with-biztalk-2010-r2-rest-wcf-webhttp-adapter/

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsdesktop/biztalk-2010-r2-rest-wcf-fdb2e91f

2013

Yes

12 Nov 2012 – Richard Seroter described how to expose a ReST service from BizTalk 2013 using the new WCF-WebHTTP adapter

http://seroter.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/exploring-rest-capabilities-of-biztalk-server-2013-part-1-exposing-rest-endpoints/

19 Nov 2012 – Richard Seroter continued in a second part to show how to use Biztalk 2013 consuming ReST service cleanly.

http://seroter.wordpress.com/2012/11/19/exploring-rest-capabilities-of-biztalk-server-2013-part-2-consuming-rest-endpoints/

28 Nov 2012 – Nino Crudele combined a ESB toolkit pattern with ReST in BizTalk 2013

http://ninocrudele.me/2012/11/28/r-esb-another-way-to-use-rest-in-biztalk-2013/

turbo360

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