Microsoft BizTalk Server consists of BizTalk Messaging and BizTalk Orchestration. BizTalk Messaging is the integration component of the product, which provides EAI and B2B integration facilities, such as data transformation and normalization. BizTalk Orchestration provides a process modeling and execution environment.

BizTalk Orchestration allows the process designer to use Visio, a graphical tool, for process modeling. When a process model is ready for deployment, BizTalk Orchestration generates executable process definitions in XLANG, which is a proprietary XML-based language. XLANG process definitions are executed by the BizTalk Orchestration process engine at run time.

The client applications of BizTalk Server encompass BizTalk Editor, BizTalk Mapper, and BizTalk Orchestration Designer.

BizTalk Orchestration Designer is used for business process design. It is based on Microsoft Visio 2000, which is included with BizTalk Server. BizTalk Orchestration Designer enables business analysts to create and maintain business process definitions that can be compiled and executed as XLANG schedules. An XLANG schedule describes a business process and the bindings of that process to business services (applications).

When a process model is ready for deployment, BizTalk Orchestration generates executable process definitions in XLANG, which is a proprietary XML-based language. XLANG process definitions are executed by the BizTalk Orchestration process engine at run time.

The BizTalk Editor is a graphical tool that allows to create and maintain document specifications in the form of XML schemas. A document specification can be created by manually defining records and fields in the BizTalk editor. Alternatively, ready-to-use document specifications which are provided for a number of UN/EDIFACT, SAP IDOCs and other popular document types, can be re-used.

BizTalk Mapper provides the design environment to create document maps that translate data formats and transform data schemas. The tool internally generates XSLT (XSL Transformation) scripts to represent mapping rules and to transform one schema into another. BizTalk Server performs data schema transformation by transforming all incoming document formats to XML unless the pass-through option is specified.

Microsoft BizTalk Server is tightly integrated with the operating system platform (Microsoft Windows). It uses Microsoft Windows 2000 security features including full support for public-key infrastructure, digital signatures, and encryption. In addition, it provides a pluggable architecture for third-party security products.