Sonic’s latest release has a number of new features – a new Workbench (based on the open source Eclipse framework, but with a number of Sonic-specific plug-ins as well), an integrated test environment, and advanced web services capability taking advantage of some of the latest WS-* ‘standards’ that are either with OASIS or still at the early (pre-standard) stage.
The Workbench provides process modeling capability (using business process modeling notation, or BPMN) and the configuration of individual services, as well as the overall process. The integrated test environment valuably supports the debugging of a distributed process – wherever the actual process stages are executing – including the ability to set breakpoints where necessary, so that the process can be stepped through, with process variables that can be interrogated to see where any problems might lie. Advanced web services allow both asynchronous and reliable messaging – still quite a challenge in the web services environment.
All in all, this new release from Sonic certainly ups the ante, and addresses some of the criticisms that have been leveled at ESBs.
Iona, meanwhile, has just announced version 4.0 of Artix, and again, this company has been active in the open source arena. A major contributor to the SOA Tooling Project, Iona is also active in some of the other SOA-related standards discussions, particularly around java business integration (JBI) and service component architecture (SCA) – as is Sonic Software.
Some of the new features to be included in Artix 4.0 are an orchestration facility; based on business process execution language (BPEL) but not really fully-blown business process management (BPM). The concept of data services is also new, allowing an element of a database to be exposed as a data service and then used within an orchestration.
Iona will also be supporting WS-Reliable Messaging to provide a guaranteed delivery capability, and the company will be improving its support for Z/OS – still one of its main differentiators in a market that largely seems to be ignoring the fact that the mainframe is still very much with us. Artix also supports both COBOL and PL/1, emphasizing this strength.
It is likely that we will be seeing updates to plenty of other ESB products over the coming months, indicating that there is still some growing up to be done in the market.
Source: OpinionWire by Butler Group (www.butlergroup.com)
