advice for learning Biztalk

[ddiamond]

I never used BizTalk before, but one of our vendors has sold management on the idea that Biztalk will make integrating their systems with ours much easier. So considering I know nothing about Biztalk, but it will be my job to manage the Biztalk server and develop business solutions with it, I attempted to get a Biztalk course approved. Management said that after I play with Biztalk on my own, if I still want a course, I can take one, but they want me to try to learn it on my own first.

So my question is, without a course, what is the best way to get started? Are there tutorials that come with biztalk? How good are they? Are there good online tutorials? Any good books to get me started that won't take months to get through?

 

[philhege]

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?WRD=biztalk&z=y&cds2Pid=9481

Also, the online courses at MSDN or MicrosoftLearning might be worth looking at by now; when I tried to take them the VMs were glacially slow.

Good luck!

Phil Hegedusich
Senior Programmer/Analyst
IIMAK

http://www.iimak.com

-----------
I'll have the roast duck with the mango salsa.

 

[ddiamond]

Thanks. I'll look into it.

 

[philhege]

You're welcome. And, to your last question: Biztalk is not a trivial technology or a simple integration tool. You'll have to spend some time with it to get the whole picture.

Phil Hegedusich
Senior Programmer/Analyst
IIMAK

http://www.iimak.com

-----------
I'll have the roast duck with the mango salsa.