The company unveiled BizTalk Orchestration, software for creating middleware that accurately models business processes.
Developers can use it to create a process flow that can be treated as a single object.
The process flow also can use several interprocess-communication schemes to coordinate data on different platforms. It also includes an object-oriented visual modeling tool based on Visio that enables managers to build and modify programs using the business process without having to do any programming. It takes as little as three lines of Visual Basic code for a programmer to add functionality from another Web site. It's been submitted to the World Wide Web Consortium as a potential standard. The next version of Visual Studio, Microsoft's software development toolkit, will include Rapid Application Development for Servers, a tool set designed to make middleware development easier, the company said.