bWise – EAI Framework Anurodh Srivastava Shalin Shekhar Mangar JSS Academy of Technical Education, Noida, India.

Enterprise Application Integration ● Enterprise application – Software specialized in a particular area ● Inventory ● Financials ● Supply Chain Management (SCM) ● Customer Relationship Management (CRM) ● Ecommerce ● Sales Force Automation – Vendors ● SAP ● Oracle ● Peoplesoft

Enterprise Application Integration ● Business process/workflow – Smooth flow of data ● Inventory ● Financials ● Supply Chain Management (SCM) ● Customer Relationship Management (CRM) ● Ecommerce ● Sales Force Automation – Automation Vendors ● Microsoft ● IBM ● Tibco

Enterprise Application Integration ● Challenges in automation – Communication ● Different input/output formats – Security ● Multiple authentication/authorization schemes – Management ● Multiple management/configuration

EAI Frameworks ● Components – Communication ● Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) ● Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) – Security ● Support for multiple security schemes – Management ● Dependent on per application basis

Why bWise ? ● Prohibitive costs ● Vendor dependence ● Lack of interoperability ● Platform dependence ● Need for consultants

How bWise helps ? ● Prohibitive costs – Open Source & Free Software ● Vendor dependence – Community Ownership ● Lack of interoperability – Open Standards (see & ● Platform dependence – Supports all platforms ● Need for consultants – Powerfull development tools

Design Problems ● Communication ● Security ● Platform Independence ● Interoperability ● Workflow description ● High Throughput ● Distributed Transactions ● Management ● Backup/Restore ● Extensibility

Communication ● Synchronous vs. Asynchronous ● Polled ● Platform independent – Document formats – Web Services ● Transformations ● Correlation

Security ● Must support multiple schemes ● Authentication ● Authorization ● Encrypted communication

Platform Independence ● Multiple Operating Systems – Linux – Unix – Windows ● Multiple programming languages – COBOL – C/C++ – Java –.NET

Interoperability ● Applications ● Competing tools ● Formats ● Languages

Workflow Description Format ● Choices – An entirely new format – XLANG (used by Microsoft) – WSFL (used by IBM, Tibco) – BPEL4WS ● Business Process Execution Language for Web Services ● Emerging standard ● Open (a w3c standard) ● Endorsed by all vendors

High Throughput ● High volume of data ● I/O maybe more expensive than processing ● Multiple processes ● Hundreds of process instances

Distributed Transactions ● Multiple business applications – Each containing multiple datastores ● A distributed transaction scheme – Coordinate a transaction between applications – Abstract commit/rollback support if available – Provide notification model – Error logging

Management ● Configuration – Logging – Notification – Messaging – Data Storage/Retrieval ● Monitoring – Per business process ● Present status ● History – Statistics ● Throughput ● Transactions

Backup/Restore ● Backup Scheme – Business process data dump – Transaction logs ● Restore Scheme – Crash recovery

Extensibility ● Ability to support future enhancements – Message transport mechanisms – Transformation mechanisms – Security schemes

Design Decisions ● Java – Advantages ● Platform independent ● Tried and tested for server applications – Downsides ● I/O Performance ● XML – Advantages ● Platform neutral data format ● Extensive support for interoperability – Downsides ● Extra Overhead in processing

Design Decisions ● Eclipse IDE – Advantages ● Mature platform ● Lesser learning curve for new developers ● Open Source – Downsides ● Increased development time ● XSD (XML Schema Document) – Advantages ● Platform neutral data description format (metadata) ● Easier to work with than DTDs

Design Decisions ● Message Queues – Advantages ● Asynchronous processing ● Guaranteed message delivery ● Correlation – Concept of envelopes ● Metadata tags ● Aid in encryption/decryption ● Security – Enterprise Single Sign-on ● One username/password for multiple applications

Design Decisions ● Code Generation – BPEL4WS vs. Java Code – Java Code provides better performance – Added complexity in code generation from business process models ● Web Services – Support for all platforms – Data format independent (uses XML) – Asynchronous mode – Apache Axis

Components of bWise ● Eclipse Development Tools (EDT) – Document Designer – Transformation Designer – Messaging Manager – Business Process Designer ● Process Execution Engine – Message Transport Agents (MTA) – Pipeline Processors – Verification & Correlation Manager – Authentication Manager – Process Co-ordinator ● Administrator Tools

Eclipse Development Tools (EDT) ● Document Designer – Analyzes documents – Generates XSD – Manipulate XSD ● Transformation Designer – Analyzes XSDs – Generates Mapping Code (XSLT or Java) ● Messaging Manager – Creation of Pipelines ● Business Process Designer – Visually draw process diagrams – Generate Code

Process Execution Engine ● Message Transport Agents (MTA) – I/O Mechanisms ● File ● Web Services ● Pipeline Processors – Transformers (document, encryption/decryption) ● Verification & Correlation Manager ● Authentication Manager – Enterprise Single Sign-on services – Cryptographic Services ● Process Co-ordinator – Workflow execution engine

Administrator Tools ● View & manage server database ● Install/Uninstall MTAs ● View & manage transaction logs ● Backup/Restore schemes ● Monitor alert notifications ● Performance statistics

Key Problem Areas ● A formal model for static analysis of a business process. ● Code generation module for business process diagrams. ● Optimization of memory usage for business processes containing long running transactions. ● An efficient scheduling algorithm for monitoring business process executions. ● A publish-subscribe model (akin to event dispatch model in java) for outcome notifications.

Future Directions ● Not just a final year project – Aims to be a stable open source software – Hopes to make a dent in EAI tools market. ● Future development directions – Support for more MTAs – Support for Legacy code (Screen Scraping) – Load Balancing – Segregation of components into independent execution units

Thank You Anurodh Srivastava Shalin Shekhar Mangar JSS Academy of Technical Education, Noida, India.