Some very cool updates in the just-released CTP3 of ESB Guidance. The changes that caught my eye include:
- Download the full Help file in CHM format. Check out what’s new in this release, sample projects, and a fair explanation of how to perform basic tasks using the package.
- New endpoint “resolver” framework. Dynamically determine endpoint and mapping settings for inbound messages. Interesting capability that I don’t have much use for (yet).
- Partial support for request/response on-ramps. An on-ramp is the way to generically accept messages onto the bus by receiving in an XmlDocument parameter. I’ll have to dig in and see what “partial support” means. Obviously the bus would need to send a response back to the caller, so I’ll be interested to see how that’s done.
- BizTalk runtime query services. Looks like it uses the BizTalk WMI interfaces to pull back information about hosts, applications, messages, message bodies and more. I could see a variety of ways I can use this to surface up environment data.
- SOA Software integration. This one excites me the most. I’m a fan (and user) of SOA Software’s web service management platform, and from the looks of it, I can now more easily plug in any (?) receive location and send port into Service Manager’s monitoring infrastructure. Nice.
I also noticed a few things on Exception Management that I hadn’t seen yet. It’s going to be a pain to rebuild all my existing ESB Guidance Exception Management solution bits, so I’ll wait to recommend an upgrade until after the final release (which isn’t far off!).
All in all, this is maturing quite nicely. Well done guys.
