(Update: See the latest on the Deployment Framework here.)

One of the more complicated aspects for a developer using BizTalk 2004 is the large number of steps required during the edit/run/debug cycle.  Since your BizTalk artifacts can't be run "in place" (that is, where they were compiled) but must instead be deployed to a local (or remote) BizTalk server, life can get quite complicated.

If you have done much BizTalk 2004 development, you know the routine quite well at this point.  If you have orchestrations, schemas, transforms, pipelines, and (say) C# components all partitioned into separate assemblies - and you have a number of orchestrations with "Call/Start Orchestration" shape dependencies that introduce specific start/stop-ordering - you can spend a lot of time doing the whole stop/unenlist/undeploy/redeploy/enlist/start/bounce BizTalk routine. 

Worse, you might not get it right - which can lead to hours spent debugging problems (over the course of your project) that don't really exist.

To alleviate this problem, it can be quite helpful to use a tool like NAnt to coordinate the "update my BizTalk server" process that must occur after each build.  (NAnt is a large topic - suffice to say it is an Xml-driven software build system.)  As long as your NAnt build file (and BizTalk bindings file) are kept up to date, the whole process can be reduced to:

1. Comple your solution (which might have multiple orchestrations, schemas, transforms, pipelines, and external components in separate assemblies)
2. Choose "Deploy to BizTalk" from your Tools menu.
3. Wait 60 seconds or so, enjoying the feeling that you have a consistent & reliable deployment mechanism.

In addition, you can of course use NAnt to kick off full unattended builds for nightly builds or continuous integration systems (like Cruise Control).  Since Visual Studio.NET is the only supported way to build BizTalk projects - despite that tempting XSharpP.exe file sitting in your BizTalk installation directory - this part of your NAnt build file must defer to calling devenv.exe in command-line fashion.  (A short "getting started" for NAnt & directions for using with a VS external tool can be found here.)

So, how about a sample that shows using NAnt to coordinate a reasonably complex deployment of inter-related BizTalk projects?  Available for download is a zip of a BizTalk solution that contains the following projects:

• BizTalkSample.Components (a C# project, with a class called from orchestration)
• BizTalkSample.Orchestrations (that contains two orchestrations, one which calls the other via a Call Orchestration shape)
• BizTalkSample.Pipelines (a send and receive pipeline, which are not needed but included to illustrate the deployment aspects)
• BizTalkSample.Schemas (which includes two schemas)
• BizTalkSample.Transforms (which contains a single transform used by one of the orchestrations)

The item I hope you will find most interesting, however, is a file called BizTalkSample.sln.build.  This is a NAnt build file that has a deployment target which captures the following dependency tree (only partially blown out here, for brevity - but this no doubt seems familiar to you if you've been using Biztalk 2004 for awhile…)

Deploy
   Deploy Schemas
      Undeploy Schemas
         Undeploy Orchestrations
            Unenlist Orchestrations
               Stop Orchestration
         Undeploy Transforms
            Undeploy Orchestrations
   Deploy Components
   Deploy Pipelines
      Undeploy Pipelines
         Undeploy Orchestrations
   Deploy Transforms
      Undeploy Transforms
         Undeploy Orchestrations
   Deploy Orchestrations
   Bounce BizTalk

Perhaps more illustrative is the output of the deployment itself - a sample of which can be seen here.  Note that the NAnt script relies heavily on the EnlistOrch.vbs and StopOrch.vbs script files that ship as samples with BizTalk 2004, as well as the BTSDeploy command line utility.

The BizTalkSample.sln.build script included in the download should represent a BizTalk project organization of sufficient complexity to act as a template for your own projects.  You will want to maintain the list (and correct ordering!) of the names of your orchestrations within the build targets for "deploy.orchestrations" and "unenlist.orchestrations" (this isn't deriveable automatically…)

Note that the build script relies on a set of naming conventions that will be evident once you spend some time with it - namely, that directory names correspond to assembly names.  In addition, the standard "Development" and "Deployment" configurations in BizTalk projects have been replaced with "Debug" and "Release", in order to not create inconsistencies with standard .NET projects (and allow for one "Configuration" property within the build script.)  This replacement was accomplished with a file-level search/replace.

There is probably room for more sophistication in this build file.  It takes a somewhat pessimistic view of what must happen for each edit/run/debug/deploy cycle, but I've found that despite the 60 seconds spent executing the script, your net productivity gain will be quite high given the time you won't waste trying to figure out what aspect of your deployment isn't correct.  Leave comments with suggestions for improvements, if you like.