Enterprise service buses hit the road

On the plus side, I drilled down easily through process-activity lists to examine run-time conditions and intervene to give stuck processes a manual push. Thanks to support for XPath and XQuery, which allow dynamic routing based on both document header and body content, Cape Clear handled complex routing and errors without a hitch.

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Specifying XSLTs (XSL Transformations) proved straightforward using the included graphical mapper, a wizard-driven tool made for quick and easy mapping of unstructured data and Excel documents, hiding much of the underlying complexity in data translation.  I did run into a minor bug in a date-transformation function, however.

Security mechanisms are good but not spectacular. Cape Clear can handle SOAP digital signatures and client-side certificate authorization as well as SAML. Tapping LDAP and Windows NT domain controllers for authorization is not a problem, and JAAS (Java Authentication and Authorization Service) can be plugged in as well. It would be great to see Cape Clear round out the security choices in a future release.

Good load balancing and fail-over management, as well as integration with SNMP and JMX (Java Management Extension)-ready management platforms, make a good case for enterprise deployment. Cape Clear could further strengthen the case by beefing up the management tools and adding some industry-specific process templates or best-practice workflows, such as those in Fiorano.

Nevertheless, with solid links to J2EE and provisions for ORB (object request broker)-protocol integration, Cape Clear presents a finely wrapped, pure-play ESB package suitable for boutique and midsize integration projects.

Cordys 4.2
Founded by Jan Baan, Nordic creator of the once-innovative Baan ERP system, Cordys is the only vendor in our roundup to incorporate a collaborative portal in its suite. Formerly known as the Cordys Business Collaboration Platform, Cordys 4.2 also includes integration middleware, an orchestration engine, and a design studio for developing business rules and modeling processes and workflow.

In addition to being the window into graphical activity monitoring, the portal serves as a foundation for centralized content development and e-learning, thanks to a WebEx plug-in. (No surprise; WebEx is a company in which Baan also has a hand.) Although the portal is a nice touch, the specific KPI (key performance indicator) templates and business intelligence capabilities still have room to grow.

Unlike the other vendors here, Cordys requires you to supply your own Web server (Microsoft IIS or Apache) and database (Oracle Database or Microsoft SQL Server), increasing up-front licensing costs. Cordys also requires you to set up a central LDAP registry for storing configuration information. The Cordys Admin Repository Server (based on OpenLDAP) is provided, but Netscape Directory Server 4 may also be used.

Cordys’ browser-based interface offers access to centralized management and development tools, including run-time monitoring and debugging. The IDE provides good graphical tools for process and application modeling, easy configuration and deployment of applications, and standard mapping for XML data transformations. On the downside, process simulation is absent and Cordys’ WSDL format is proprietary.

The Cordys IDE allows development from several vantages, focusing either on value chain, business context, or straightforward process modeling. Although modeling is currently based on BPML (Business Process Modeling Language), Cordys indicates that BPEL import is forthcoming with eventual migration to full native support.

Architecturally, deployment used to require that each SOAP-processing end point be configured in its own JVM. With this release, Cordys allows you to reduce resource overhead by running multiple processors in a single virtual machine. Caveat deployer, however: Doing so would also make it possible for one nasty bug or system restart to bring down your entire system.

All of the Cordys platform’s functions are extended as Web services and reachable through SOAP calls. Cordys’ message bus also supports Microsoft MQ and includes fair provisions for fail-over. Cordys also offers a JMS connector, but it has not been certified as compliant with the Sun spec and it has never been tested in a customer deployment.

The basic security features include support for Windows-based authentication and ACLs (access control lists). The bundled ACL editor is a nice touch.

Cordys’ ESB shows good promise. Despite various shortcomings, the components of the suite are surprisingly mature for a five-year-old company. The absence of provisions for enterprise management systems (SNMP or JMX), and overdependence on third-party adapters for business-to-business and mainframe integration may limit its appeal in certain circles.

FioranoESB Suite 3.7
Fiorano Software steps into the ESB arena with a Java-based integration stack that combines JMS messaging (FioranoMQ), BPM, and SOA adaptability. Although Fiorano has come to refer to its architecture as “brokered peer-to-peer,” the reality is that — in the absence of a WS-* spec like WS-ReliableMessaging, which Fiorano does not yet support — ensuring the reliability and integrity of transactions will require deploying FioranoMQ (or a similar middleware component) centrally or at the end point.

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