A Talk with Two Titles Well, actually three including this one

What's in an ESB Not unlike: William A. Woods: What's in a Link (1971) Ronald J. Brachman: What's in a Concept (1977) Note, there's no question mark in either title!

Main Entry: os·ten·ta·tious [Merriam-Webster] marked by or fond of conspicuous or vainglorious and sometimes pretentious display What an ostentatious title!

Three Letters: 263 = Possibilities MOM, EAI, EIP, JMS, JBI, JCA, SOA, SCA, SOI, MEP, ORM, CMP, CMT, DSL, JMX, TLA, NMR, ESB...

Content 1. Confusion (subjective!) 2. Escapism into technology 3. Catharsis and finding ways to blame others

1. Confusion (subjective!) My Semantic Network Link Semantics: "is somehow related to, but I have no idea how and I'm not in the mood to figure it out"

Views on the Issue of SOA (1) "Democratic/chaotic" message flow over TCP/IP, http, smtp/pop, bicycle courier or whatever is available? Charming idea - but how does this all work without - "authority"/"trust" concepts as in URLs, DNS, SSL/TLS,.. - transactions, security,... (2) "Regulated/dictatorial" flow in a standardised "communication framework"? Uncharming idea - at first - why not an asynchronous message-based structure on top of a "wire", like w3? - message passing "patterns", routing - message format transformation - connectors: TCP, RMI, HTTP, in-Container, bicycle courier,... - the usual: security, (failure) management, protocols/APIs,...

As we all know: If there's one thing you can trust, it's imagery!

Yeah! Right!

Especially in the context of ESB, imagery can be misleading!

2. Escapism into technology (A)Synchronous Message Passing MOM (JMS) Business Integration JBI Adapter Architectures JCA

MOM (Message-Oriented Middleware) Examples: JMS/OpenMQ/ActiveMQ MSMQ (MS Message Queue) David A. Chappell: Enterprise Service Bus, O'Reilly, 2004

JMS (Java Message Service) - Underlying EJB (Message Driven Beans) - point-to-point (message queues) - publish/subscribe ("bulletin board") - guaranteed delivery - synchronous/asynchronous message "patterns"

JMS "on the wire"? Use MDBs or the JMS API directly Use a J2EE compliant container, like GlassFish ("in-container" transport)

MQ (Message Queue) Systems Apache ActiveMQ JMS + "OpenWire" socket wrapper API + JCA compliance Routing over Apache Camel --> EIP Sun OpenMQ (aka Sun Java System MQ) JMS provider in GlassFish 2.x + Clustering + JCA compliance

EIP? Extension of WSDL MEPs (?) Watch the title permutations!

EIP [ Transactional Clients Guaranteed Delivery Normalizerhttp://

Java Business Integration (JBI) "JBI does not define a traditional application programming model. Instead, it embraces a service-oriented approach to structuring enterprise functions, where JBI plug-in components function as service providers and consumers." [Java™ Business Integration (JBI) 1.0, 2005]

JBI Components Implemented: Service Engines implement a service Binding Components connect to external service providers/consumers Shared Libraries are what we think they are all connected over the NMRhttps://open-jbi-components.dev.java.net/

Sun OpenESB JBI Container + Community-provided modules + open for EIP implementation (???) Sun GlassFishESB OpenESB dropped into GlassFish

Apache ServiceMix JBI Container + JMX Container Management + JDBC + jetty (Servlet container) Now add Apache ActiveMQ Apache Camel (Routing) [ Apache CXF (Services) [ (Apache) Fuse [

Mule

3. Catharsis and finding ways to blame others So, what's in an ESB? Notice the question mark? Hub to "virtualize" Message Passing JBI + wiring EIP (ESB "mantra") for Context-based Routing Orchestration/Choreography (?)

I mean...

Right?

Wrong! That's what's in an ESB Container!

ESB Container ESB

ESB = (?) A distributed architecture of ESB/JBI containers in an enterprise (group) connected by a reliable messaging infrastructure smart but consistent routing central (?) administration in-place security protocols (WS-x) anything else you can think of to make this happen ESB/JBI containers are just the operational "backbones" of an ESB architecture!

Understanding ESB by looking at OpenESB/Fuse/Mule/... is like understanding the WWW by looking at Apache httpd

Things you want to "google" today: ESB and SCA ESB Interoperability OSGI Things you want to "google" in 2010: ESB Intermediation ESB Protocol Bridging ESB Data Transformation Service

A Word of Encouragement? Bobby Woolf: ESB-oriented architecture: The wrong approach to adopting SOA "The problem is this: An ESB by itself produces no business value. An ESB is a means to an end, not the end itself. An ESB is like the electrical wiring or plumbing of an SOA. [...] An ESB without an SOA is like a road from someplace nobody is located going to other places nobody wants to be." "Don't build it until you need it."

A Word of Defiance? "The recent buzz around ESBs is rivaled only by the ambiguity with which the term is defined. While Sonic Software and Gartner originally used the term to refer to the XML-enabled SonicXQ MOM product (which was later renamed "SonicESB"), ESB has also been used to refer to the message bus architectural integration pattern [...]. However, as a growing number of companies began marketing their EAI and MOM products as ESBs, the term has generally been associated with a class of product, rather than an architectural pattern." "Once WS-ReliableMessaging and other key Web services framework standards are universally implemented, the need for vendor-proprietary ESB protocol stacks will wither away."