Use this cheat sheet to understand your technology choices for integration. Your choice of integration technology will be related to the application type you are developing. Use the Integration Technologies Summary to review each technology and its description. Use the Benefits and Considerations Matrix to make an informed choice of integration technology based on the advantages and considerations of each one. Use the Common Scenarios and Solutions to map your application scenario to common integration technology solutions.
The following table breaks down the benefits and considerations for each integration technology.
| Technology | Benefits | Considerations |
| BizTalk | Enables electronic document exchange relationships between companies using Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and/or Extensible Markup Language (XML) formats. | Might lead to tightly coupled infrastructure. |
| | Integrates with non-Microsoft systems. | Requires customization to achieve ESB capabilities. |
| | Easily extended to provide Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) capabilities. | |
| | WCF line-of-business (LOB) adapters enable development of custom adapters for use inside or outside BizTalk. | |
| | Provides out-of-box adapters for integration with systems such as SAP, Oracle, SQL, etc. | |
| | Provides SOAP adapter to help you to work with Web services. | |
| Host Integration Server | Supports network integration between Microsoft Windows Server® and IBM mainframe or AS/400 computers. | Must be installed in a Windows Server environment. |
| | Provides secure host access and identity management with support for Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)/Transport Layer Security (TLS), single sign-on (SSO), and password synchronization. | Requires Microsoft Visual Studio® 2005 or greater. |
| | Provides data integration with support for MSMQ and XML-based Web services. | Requires MSMQ with routing support. |
| | Includes a data access tool for creating and managing connections with Database 2 (DB2) databases. | |
| | Supports enterprise scalability and performance with simultaneous host sessions, load balancing, and hot failover. | |
| | BizTalk adapters for Host Systems are available to support BizTalk integration with DB2, IBM WebSphere MQ, Host Applications, and Host Files. | |
| Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ) | Enables applications to communicate with each other across heterogeneous networks using message-based scenarios. | Deployment mode should be considered prior to installing and configuring MSMQ. |
| | Supports reliable messaging between applications inside and outside of an enterprise. | When using the Workgroup deployment mode, messages cannot be encrypted, internal certificates cannot be used, and cross-platform messaging is not supported. |
| | Supports transactional capabilities, such as ensuring that messages are only delivered once, that messages are delivered in order, and confirmation that messages were retrieved from destination queues. | Independent clients should be used instead of dependent clients. |
| | Provides message routing based on network topology, transport connectivity, and session concentration needs. | MSMQ is optimized for sending remotely and receiving locally. As a result, you should avoid remote queue reads. |
| | Allows message delivery over HTTP transport with support for SOAP Reliable Messaging Protocol (SRMP). | You should avoid functions that query Active Directory. |
| | Supports the distribution of a single message to multiple destinations. | Asynchronous notifications using events can become lost. |
| | Is included with Windows Server 2003 and above. | WCF endpoints require Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 or above. |
| | Supports two deployment modes: domain mode with access to the Microsoft Active Directory® directory service, and Workgroup mode. | |
| | Includes WCF-provided endpoints for MSMQ. | |
| Microsoft Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) Guidance | Provides dynamic resolution of service endpoints at run time, which abstracts endpoint definition. | You need BizTalk server. |
| | Decouples the message transformation from the application. | You might need customization for a specific business scenario. |
| | Integrates closely with WCF to provide security and reliable messaging. | Needs Dunda’s charts for exception management portal. |
| | Provides fault detection and reporting, through unified exception handling for both system and business exceptions. | The EBS itinerary tracking data does not have out-of-box display. |
| | Provides out-of-box resolvers for communicating with service registries such as Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI). | |
| | Supports an itinerary-based approach for routing and transformation. | |
| | Supports client-side and server itineraries. | |
| | Supports resolver extensibility for creating custom resolvers. | |
| | Supports designer for itinerary creation. | |
| | Supports exception management portal. | |
| | Exposes all key features such as exception handling, resolver, etc., as a Web service. | |
| | Provides itinerary tracking using Business Activity Monitoring (BAM). | |