In a sudden change of events, I'm now learning BizTalk Server. This changes my planned Tech Ed sessions a little bit!

Anyway, I spent the past two days going over the Tutorials. They're pretty good at teaching you the ins and outs of setting up schemas, mapping schemas from one to another, setting up orchestrations, defining ports and messages, etc., but I don't think I'll truly Get It until I have a real-world problem to solve, which is coming after I get back from Tech Ed.

I don't tend to pick up things quickly following directions. I'd rather have to design the orchestration myself and then use the tutorial instructions as a guideline for telling me how to do what I need to do. That's how I learn the best.

I will say that so far, I'm surprised by how manual the deployment process is. I'm used to ASP.NET, where you code, build and use. With BizTalk, you code, build, deploy, enlist, and start. And you have to enlist and start in order.

I'll probably post updates as I come across some "ah has" along the way.