Any point in having BizTalk Server Developer Edition without proper Visual Studio?

Question

Microsoft provides a free Developer Edition of BizTalk Server. I'd like to do some BizTalk development to get insights into what I think is an interesting bit of enterprise technology. Now, BizTalk Server systems requirements list a full version of Visual Studio as a prerequisite for the BizTalk Developer Tools:

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 provides a development environment for rapidly building applications that target any device and integrate with any platform. This is required for the Developer Tools and SDK component of both BizTalk Server and BizTalk RFID. The Developer Tools and SDK component cannot be installed on Visual Studio 2010 Express Editions.

There's a video Example of an Orchestration (BizTalk) that gives you an idea of what the Dev Tools for VS look like.

Is it possible to do BizTalk development without the Dev Tools? Does it make sense? Is there any point in installing BizTalk Server on a developer machine without a non-Express version of Visual Studio?

Answer 1

You should be able to install the BizTalk server runtime, which would allow you to dig around in the BizTalk Server Administration console. You can use that to create ports that send and receive messages, without the need for Visual Studio.

However, that is about as far as you can go without Visual Studio. You'll need it to compile schemas, build maps to transform data, and create orchestrations.