WSO2 ESB-2.0 is released!!

WSO2 ESB-2.0 brings the power and performance in Apache Synapse mediation and the modularity of the OSGi framework into a single space.

WSO2 ESB-2.0 is based on Apache Synapse-1.2 and it will bring a magnificent tool to the Synapse configuration development. It is not only a development tool because it allows you to monitor the mediation through the web console.

WSO2 ESB is comprised with a set of good new features to make it easy to build a synapse configuration graphically. Some of the features implemented on the WSO2 ESB-2.0 are;

• This ESB release is based on Carbon "Middleware a' la carte" which is an OSGi based SOA platform by WSO2 Inc.
• Transactional JMS transport and the Transaction mediators
• Integrated graphical user management
• Integrated graphical key store management
• Configurable logging through the management console
• Graphical data source declaration
• WS-Eventing support and Event Sources making it an event broker
• Enhanced sequence and proxy service editor
• Module management capability
• Transport configuration management through the graphical console
• Graceful/Forced shutdown/restart
• Enhanced integrated registry and search functionalities
• User permissions support
• Enhanced monitoring tools for statistics and tracing
• Try-It tool to try an existing service
• Graphical policy editor
• Administration console fully internationalized
• Better modularity and extendability through OSGi component architecture

You could find more information on this release over here. The project home page will contain all the relevant information while it has a comprehensive documentation, You can download the ESB-2.0 release and give it a try.

ApacheCon Streaming

ApacheCon live video streaming available; keynotes and Apache 101 are free

Can't make ApacheCon this week in New Orleans? You can still watch all
the keynotes, Apache 101 sessions, and system administration track in
live video streams:

http://streaming.linux-magazin.de/en/program_apacheconus08.htm?ann

Keynotes and the Apache 101 lunchtime sessions are free; the full
sysadmin track, including httpd performance, security, and server stack
administration talks are available for a fee.

Keynotes include:
- David Recordon, Six Apart (Wednesday 09:30)
"Learning from Apache to create Open Specifications"

- Shahani Markus Weerawarana, Ph.D. (Thursday 11:30)
"Standing on the Shoulders of Giants"

- Sam Ramji, Microsoft (Friday 11:30)
"struct.new("future", :open, :microsoft)"


Reminder: New Orleans is CST or UTC/GMT -6 hours.


Advance notice: ApacheCon EU 2009 returns to Amsterdam, 23-27 March. We
had a great response to our CFP and look forward to announcing the
schedule in the next month.

Synapse/ESB clustering guide

Finally we got it published on WSO2 Oxygen Tank.....

We have been trying our best to get a clustering guide for synapse and especial thanks should goes to Eric Hubert from Jamba! GmbH, (one of the great users of Synapse/ESB) for providing the great feed back and the support he given as an author.

This clustering guide describes how to enable clustering as well as the basics of clustering and preferred deployment model. At the same time this further specifies a set of samples of clustered deployment of statefull mediators like Throttle and Cache.

Synapse artifacts are OSGi compliant

Synapse artifact jar files are now OSGi compliant...!!

This means that you can now use the synapse artifact jar files within an OSGi container, but Synapse standalone server is not yet an OSGi container.

You may read more on this in this blog

Apache Synapse Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) Performance Testing - Round 3

We have just concluded the third round of Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) performance testing here at WSO2! The WSO2 Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) v1.7 embeds the Apache Synapse Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) v.1.2 at its core, and thus the performance numbers between these are identical.

Its great to hear that even BEA / Oracle was very much interested about the performance numbers we demonstrated last year, and wanted to beat our numbers with their latest release of AquaLogic Service Bus 3.0 on Weblogic 10. I think this demonstrates a level of trust by the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) vendors and users alike, on the tests we conducted. The fact that we made the configurations/tuning and the tools used openly available, and asked for help from the vendors to optimally configure their ESB's for the scenarios, and reporting back any problems we encountered adds to the level of openness we demonstrated. Additionally this round of testing shows that even the WSO2 Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) / Apache Synapse Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) has room for improvement against a proprietary ESB that we benchmarked against, but also shows a very clear lead against the other open source alternatives.


It should be noted that the advantages of the WSO2 Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) / Apache Synapse Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) does not lie only on its low resource usage foot print, excellent performance or scalability or its free and open source Apache License v2.0 alone; but in its ease of use, the ability to define a configuration graphically, and the fact that it ships over 55 working samples and documentation that demonstrates various features to help users become effective from day 1.

Let me just highlight some of the observations and conclusions here

- Mule CE 2.0.1 couldn't handle the cases where we used a concurrency level of 80; while other ESB's scaled to support to over 2500 concurrent connections. This was after tuning the maximum active thread count to 100 from its default value, which limited Mule to a very few concurrent connections.

- A proprietary version of an open source ESB had the same problem described above.

- Mule CE 2.0.1 also dropped 1% of ALL requests it received

- Apache ServiceMix 3.2.1 failed to forward the incoming SOAPAction for proxy services, and this was now a known issue (I would consider this a blocker, and would suggest that ServiceMix folks follow up a 3.2.2 release just to fix this critical issue)

- A proprietary ESB we benchmarked and beat last year, did some major improvements to their performance, and did 1.6~1.9 times better than us for some of the scenarios

- The WSO2 Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) / Apache Synapse Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) shows a clear lead and dominates the open source ESB space


Read about it all here: http://wso2.org/library/3740 and run the benchmarks yourself!

Synapse 1.2 released!

The Apache Synapse team is pleased to announce the release of
version 1.2 of the Open Source Enterprise Service Bus (ESB).

Apache Synapse is an lightweight and easy-to-use Open Source
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) available under the Apache Software License
v2.0. Apache Synapse allows administrators to simply and easily configure
message routing, intermediation, transformation and logging task scheduling,
etc.. The runtime has been designed to be completely asynchronous,
non-blocking and streaming.

The Apache Synapse project and the 1.2 release can be found here:
http://synapse.apache.org

Apache Synapse offers connectivity and integration with a range of
legacy systems, XML-based services and SOAP Web Services. It supports
non-blocking HTTP and HTTPS using the Apache HTTPCore (http://hc.apache.org)
components, as well as supporting JMS (v1.0 and higher) and a range of
file systems and FTP sources including SFTP, FTP, File, ZIP/JAR/TAR/GZ
via the Apache VFS project (http://commons.apache.org/vfs/filesystems.html).
At the same time Synapse 1.2 release adds the support for the Financial
Information eXchange (FIX) an industry driven messaging standard through
QuickFixJ, Hessian binary web service protocol, as well as other functional,
stability and performance improvements. Synapse supports transformation and
routing between protocols without any coding via configurable virtual services.

Synapse provides first class support for standards such as WS-Addressing,
Web Services Security (WSS), Web Services Reliable Messaging (WSRM),
Throttling and caching, configurable via WS-Policy upto message level,
as well as efficient binary attachments (MTOM/XOP).

The 1.2 release contains a set of enhancements based on feedback from
the user community, including:

• Support for Hessian binary web service protocol
• FIX (Financial Information eXchange) protocol for messaging
• WS-Reliable Messaging support with WSO2 Mercury
• Support for re-usable database connection pools for DB report/lookup mediators
• Support for GZip encoding and HTTP 100 continue
• Natural support for dual channel messaging with WS-Addressing
• Cluster aware sticky load balancing support
• Non-blocking streaming of large messages at high concurreny with constant memory usage
• Support for an ELSE clause for the Filter mediator
• Ability to specify XPath expressions relative to the envelope or body
• Support for separate policies for incoming/outgoing messages
• Support for a mandatory sequence before mediation

The combination of XML streaming and asynchronous support for HTTP and HTTPS
using Java NIO ensures that Synapse has very high scalability under load.
Performance tests show that Synapse can scale to support thousands of
concurrent connections with constant memory on standard server hardware.

Apache Synapse ships with over 50 samples
(http://synapse.apache.org/Synapse_Samples.html)
designed to demonstrate common integration patterns "out-of-the-box",
along with supporting sample services, and service clients that
demonstrate these scenarios. Apache Synapse is configured using a

straightforward XML configuration syntax

(http://synapse.apache.org/Synapse_Configuration_Language.html).

Apache Synapse is openly developed by a community that welcomes all
forms of input, ranging from suggestions and bug reports to patches and
code contributions. Your comments and feedback on the project and release
are welcomed.

The Apache Synapse code and binaries are available from the website
at http://synapse.apache.org

Thanks
The Apache Synapse Team

Mock Web services with Apache Synapse to develop and test Web services

Apache Synapse is not just for large scale enterprise integration work. The simplicity of the configuration, out-of-the-box feature set, extensible architecture, and the minimal footprint makes it a versatile and powerful tool that you can use for a variety of tasks.

This IBM developerWorks tutorial will explain how you can use Apache Synapse to create mock Web services. Apache Synapse is a multi use tool that every developer should have in his or her tool set whether be it for solving enterprise systems integration problems or personal tasks.