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I wrote the other day about the release of Apache Synapse version 1 and how it set the stage for a variety of open source software (OSS) products that can take advantage of its asynchronous brokering structure and service oriented architecture (SOA) framework. Of course it was easy to say that when I already knew that a couple of the Synapse committers would followup this week with a Synapse-based OSS product. Their UK-based company WS02, with Intel venture funds behind it, rolled out its Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) Monday June 11.

WSO2 says its ESB “can route messages with sub-millisecond overhead and can scale to manage thousands of simultaneous connections” because it uses an integrated XML-based registry of WSO2 design and a simple AXIS-based graphical interface on top of Synapse and not a lot non-Web-related framework underneath. WSO2’s products are optimized to handle web services, a characteristic that Progress’ Sonic (another committer organization) might suggest is limiting, but one that keeps the code lightweight and ideal for working across the web as opposed to across Intranets. WSO2 says throttling, load balancing and failover controls optimize availability and help to manage and maintain service-level agreement, a key ingredient in my definition of SOA.

The ESB is WSO2’s second offering, following its Web Services Application Server (WSAS) launched in 2006. Both are 100-percent open source, based on key standards, and work with J2EE, .NET, JMS, and HTTP/S-based systems, as well as Apache Axis and Axis2 endpoints. The product is available “free,” under the Apache license of course. WSO2 makes its money offering a range of service and support options that include consulting, custom development, and sponsorship of open source feature development; development and production support; and training. Additionally, the WSO2 “Oxygen Tank” is an interesting OSS portal concept that provides in-depth product information, tutorials, tools, forums, wikis and more.

I am not sure if the community is going to be more accepting of such vendor sponsored sites as opposed to sourceforge and like portals but it will be an interesting OSS side issue to follow.

I am a firm believer that web services are not the be all/end all but if they are all you need, why build them on an SOA platform that will weigh down your whole development effort? These guys are worth taking a look at; I hope to interview them in the future for the "Talking With..." series because of their long-term knowledge of the WS and other OSS community issues.

Posted by dennisb in OSS Business Issue |Digg This|Add to del.icio.us

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