Today I was installing Biztalk 2004, once again for my new project. At times, it looks really painful downloading the prerequisites and then installing. The funny thing is some of the prerequisites are not properly mentioned on the Microsoft Download Website. For example, if you want to download SQL Analysis Server 2000 Service Pack 3a, you will be sent to a website where you will get 3 different msi’s. There is no message given on the web page about which one contains what. After downloading the complete files only, you will be able to distinguish which one is of your use. I think, this issue should be raised to the website maintaince team so that they can produce more accurate and usable information.
Anyway, I installed Biztalk Successfully. Howver, I will rate the experience as average.
After installing this, I also installed SMS 2003 on a different machine, but the experince was totally different. It is installed quite smoothly. I would rate it excellent. Though i don’t know how to configure it, but installation of SMS 2003 is relatively easy than Biztalk.