ODBA for BizTalk 2006... okay I'll take another look...

Just read Richard Seroter's post on the BizTalk ODBA (Orchestration Designer for Business Analysts), and it is just enough for me to take another look.

In particular some of the new features/improvements include:

• Layout and usability changes. We've improved the experience of importing an orchestration and creating the initial layout. In the existing version of the ODBA, when you import and orchestration, you may often find yourself spending a few minutes just trying to reorganize the diagram into something that is humanly readable. Now it's much cleaner from the get-go.
• BAM integration. This is the most significant change, in my opinion. The ODBA user can now define BAM data, and even identify the milestones that matter. Then, a valid BAM XML configuration can be exported and consumed by the BAM Management tool. Technically you don't need to use Excel anymore if you don't want to. However, it appears that you cannot define analysis-based dimensions for the data in the ODBA, so if you want to create aggregation cubes, you'd still use Excel.

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