Where's the beef?
We can all do better by following your blog. After waiting this long, it's just too much elementary material.
Worst book I've purchased
I bought this book in the hopes of having a fast path to learning Biztalk Server 2004. This book is hopeless - indeed I've learned significantly more from doing the Microsoft tutorials and reading the online reference material than fro mthis book. I normally don't bother to write reviews on books I've purchased, but I feel so badly let down by these authors that I'd prefer to do my part in preventing other readers from being ripped off.
Big disappointment
While the original "BizTalk Unleashed" by Susie Adams was an excellent book about a poor product, this is a poor book about an (apparently) excellent product.
Hardly any hardcore technical content. Calling trivial examples "patterns". The chapters about HWS, BAS and BAM left me totally in the dark. Definitely a missed opportunity.
A lot more to be done
We also awaited this book with baited breath. We experienced a nightmare in development when Biztalk 2004 was released with no documentation. Microsoft needs to pull their game even the Microsoft employees I spoke to agreed this was not how a product should be released. Biztalk has some very fierce competition in the Enterprise Application Integration space and I've heard of a few companies in NZ (where I'm based) dropping Biztalk 2004 mid development to go to SeeBeyond. Hopefully a third party will produce a better book. I suspect however that Biztalk 2004 will be a short lived product as Indigo is not far away (2 yrs) from release. As Biztalk shares much of Indigo's technology there will need to be a another release soon, bad strategic planning by Microsoft. It is however a very powerful product and I believe a good starting point but please no more painful releases.
What a mess
The Biztalk team should be ashamed, Biztalk 2004 is the worst documented Microsoft product I have seen in years. The product itself is stable and powerful - but the documentation is incredibly weak. This book provides a somewhat better approach to learning the basics than the product documentation - but thats really not much of a complement. Unfortunately, only the chapters that cover the basics are worth reading. The worst problem with this book is the lack of samples and code in critical areas. For instance, the chapter on developing adapters provides no full example, no sample code in the download, and no strategy for actually implementing an adapter. The chapter on orchestration correlation - no full example or sample code. There's a couple of chapters on "patterns" which offer little more than short scenario walkthroughs - thats not what patterns are. But the biggest insult of all is that the chapter on using the native (pre built) adapters was made an "Appendix" that was available online.. But its not there? Who are they trying to fool? Using the native adapters is critical information and the lack of this chapter should have prevented this book from being published. I realize biztalk is a big, new product - but the poor quality of the documentation, including this book, is going to hurt the products adoption.
