Is it possible to deploy BizTalk artifacts compiled from a Visual Studio 2010 solution to a BizTalk 2006 R2 server?

Question

We currently use Visual Studio 2005 to compile artifacts deployed to multiple environments which use BizTalk Server 2006 R2.

We intend to migrate to Visual Studio and BizTalk Server 2010. We will have to keep the old environments alongside the new ones for a while before completely switching to the new ones.

My question is:

Will we be able to generate BizTalk artifacts from Visual Studio 2010 solutions and be able to deploy them to both existing BizTalk 2006 R2 servers and our new BizTalk 2010 servers ?

Answer 1

Visual Studio 2010 won't let you target the .Net Framework 3.5 required to develop a BizTalk Server 2006 R2 solution - you will get a nice error stating that 're-targeting of the project has been cancelled'.

So the answer to your question is that no, you won't be able to generate BizTalk artifacts from Visual Studio 2010 solutions and be able to deploy them to both existing BizTalk 2006 R2 servers and new BizTalk 2010 servers - BTS2010 targets the .Net Framework 4, while 2006 R2 & 2009 target the .Net Framework 3.5.

As described at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/ff629735.aspx however, you can use VS2010 to import existing BizTalk Server 2006 R2 and BizTalk Server 2009 solutions, automatically converting them to VS2010/BTS2010 solutions for deployment to BTS2010.