What is BizTalk Labs?

BizTalk Labs provides early access to experimental connectivity and business process technologies.

Some of the technologies that are currently available at BizTalk Labs include:

• Identity Services are hosted services that enable organizations to more easily manage their users and help developers create more secure applications that support user identities from many different organizations.
• Connectivity Services are hosted services that make application messaging between organizations easier.
• Workflow Services are hosted services that execute user defined declarative Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) workflows built using BizTalk Services SDK in a reliable and scalable manner. The services hosted tools and APIs allow you to manage and track the execution of workflow instances running on the service. It simplifies the need to write complex code to orchestrate the interactions between services.
• The BizTalk Labs SDK provides extensions to the .NET Framework to make it easier for developers to use Web standards such as HTTP and RSS and to build composite applications.

We think of the technologies here at BizTalk Labs as pieces of an Internet Service Bus - a fabric that interconnects distributed applications.

Keep in mind that the technologies available at BizTalk Labs are experimental. In many cases we have not decided on what they will be named, whether they will become fully released products, or how we will charge for them. And while we will do our best to ensure the services at BizTalk Labs are available, they will occasionally be unavailable as we update them.

Give the technologies here at BizTalk Labs a try, have fun, and let us know what you think!