In less than two years from first being proposed as an open source Web service mediation framework, Apache Software Foundation (ASF) Synapse emerged from incubation status in January 2007 and moved to the step all projects aim for, Release 1, on June 8, 2007. Synapse is a lightweight XML and Web Services management and integration broker that can form the basis of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and/or an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) and/or another web services infrastructure offering. It provides transformation and routing, and supports loose coupling between services. Its components work together with Axis2 1.2, an implementation of the SOAP recommendation from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and other open source software (OSS) projects, particularly the Axis Object Model (Axiom). Synapse remains a part of the Apache Web Services project, as compared to ActiveMQ, which more or less began as part of Geronimo but became its own top-level ASF project when it emerged from incubation. The Synapse hierarchy makes sense technically and in terms of the heritage of key Synapse movers and shakers.
I recalled a little debate about what Synapse was when first announced (sort of an integration broker, sort of an ESB, sort of a management product) so I went back and to this article by Coleen Frye. Dave Chappell, vice president and chief technology evangelist for Progress’ Sonic Software, was quoted by Colleen: “We decided we were not going to call Synapse an ESB. We talked about this in great length, and we're all clear we don't want it to take the place of an ESB or other SOA infrastructure products."
You can also note my snide remark at the time as well but I am happy to say the group delivered on its promise. It is not another ESB (nor a MOM) nor an SOA framework but can form the basis of either as well as other types of systems management or similar infrastructure software. Project leaders from WSO2 (founded by key leaders of the Apache Web Services Project), Sonic, Atos Origin, and IBM kept the project on track. Infravio dropped out along the way, possibly the effect of being acquired by a company (WebMethods) that was later itself acquired (by SoftwareAG). Iona became less involved as its OSS strategy evolved in different directions (e.g., moving Celtix over to Apache, acquiring LogicBlaze).
The major changes in Synapse since the 0.91 release are:
* Upgraded to use Apache Axis2 1.2
* Addition of the non-blocking HTTP and HTTPS transport
* Improved samples and documentation
* Enhanced support for WSDL endpoints and load-balancing, throttling and failover
The Apache Synapse code and binaries are available from the website
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