Steve Martin (no, the other Steve Martin) recently blogged about the Beta release of BizTalk Server 2009 — and there was much rejoicing. If you haven’t been keeping up — and who can keep up with everything? — Microsoft announced in September 2008 that the effort formerly known as BizTalk Server (BTS) 2006 R3 will be BTS 2009 and will be a full release of the product.

But back to our story: Steve also highlighted the release of the ESB Guidance 2.0 CTP October 2008, based on the BTS 2009 Beta, which updates the existing guidance, Microsoft ESB Guidance for BTS 2006 R2, from November 2007.

The ESB Guidance 2.0 CTP is delivered as a zip file which contains two MSI files (for x86 and x64) and an installation doc. For now, I am primarily interested in the documentation, so I performed and administrative installation of the MSI using the msiexec.exe command line utility:

msiexec /a "ESB Guidance 2.0 CTP October 2008.msi"

I don’t know how msiexec.exe determines the destination of an administrative installation, but I found the results easily enough in “D:\Programs\Microsoft ESB Guidance 2.0 CTP – October 2008”. In the Docs folder is a compiled help (.chm) file with the goods. Happy reading.

Bonus track. If terms like BTS, ESB, SOA, and BPM are the very stuff that piques your interest, then take note of the 2009 Microsoft SOA and BP Conference in Redmond, January 28–29, 2009, and the accompanying road show. Last year’s SOA and BP Conference is where Microsoft publically announced the Oslo initiative. This year’s conference looks to be quite compelling.