Bostech has announced the general availability of ChainBuilder ESB 1.0, a new Open Source Enterprise Service Bus centered on open JBI standard and development through Eclipse-based graphical user interfaces. ChainBuilder ESB allows users to implement an SOA infrastructure for services consumption/publishing, routing, transformation, service orchestration and integration with disparate applications. IT developers can use ChainBuilder ESB’s Component Flow Editor to graphically layout the flow of SOA components within an Eclipse IDE interface. The ChainBuilder ESB Component Flow Editor hides the complexities of the JBI specifications and allows developers to code to the JBI standard without becoming an expert in the mundane details of the specification. Another unique advantage of the ChainBuilder ESB solution is that disparate business applications can also be brought into the XML-based SOA fold. ChainBuilder ESB provides format editors enabling the point-and-click mapping of non-XML message formats, like fixed, variable and X12 EDI formats. The IDE also provides an integrated testing framework to allow users develop and test without deploying into the runtime server. ChainBuilder ESB also provides binding components to handle traditional communication protocols, like file transports and FTP. The functionality improvements from the ChainBuilder ESB beta release to general availability include:

• Separate development and runtime environments (separately downloadable) to allow deployment flexibility.
• Enhanced Web Services support to import WSDL files to generate XML Schema and export WSDL files for external Web Services consumer.
• New JDBC Service Engine to interact with a relational database with full transaction support using JDBC.
• New database operation in the mapping that provides a message enrichment capability to support lookup functions to a relational database using JDBC.
• New Script Service Engine that allows developers to write custom business logic using Groovy script or Java
• Full meta data support in each ChainBuilder ESB component to enable great flexibility of customization via a map or scripting.
• New Web-based Console to administer, monitor and control the JBI components, Service units, Service Assemblies and ChainBuilder ESB Server.

The ChainBuilder ESB Console is an AJAX-based web interface for monitoring and controlling the ESB in a production environment. A monitoring solution is a necessity for a production SOA infrastructure; the ChainBuilder ESB Console provides IT administrators remote web access to perform management tasks, like install components, deploy applications, examine error database and view server runtime log files. Beyond the functionality of this open source software, Bostech Corporation is a full service organization offering ChainBuilder ESB Professional Subscriptions that fulfill three levels of training, support, warranty and intellectual property indemnification for enterprise organizations using ChainBuilder ESB. For a complete list of product functionality in ChainBuilder ESB’s General Availability release, visit http://www.chainforge.net/chainbuilder. ChainBuilder ESB supports both Windows and Linux operating systems. Message was edited by: joeo@enigmastation.com

The phrase 'Ajax Based Admin Console' reminds me of the phrase 'Our washing powder just washes whiter than white'. I just want my clothes to be clean. And I just want my ESB to be as reliable / easy to configure as possible with a nice Admin console. I don't care if it's jumped on the Ajax bandwagon or not. Which is a pity as, apart from the Ajax comment, Chainbuilder appears to be a half-decent product. Paul , Technology in Plain English

The phrase 'Ajax Based Admin Console' reminds me of the phrase 'Our washing powder just washes whiter than white'.

I just want my clothes to be clean. And I just want my ESB to be as reliable / easy to configure as possible with a nice Admin console. I don't care if it's jumped on the Ajax bandwagon or not.

Which is a pity as, apart from the Ajax comment, Chainbuilder appears to be a half-decent product.

Paul , Technology in Plain English

We mentioned AJAX not just because it is a new buzzword. We mentioned it in the title for two reasons. It is the latest feature we added since the beta release. Second, we use the Google Web Toolkit to develop the AJAX GUI. Comparing to traditional JSP/Servlet or Struts framework which we had experience before, we do feel that AJAX technology improves user experience and performance. Eric Lu www.chargeforge.net

BTW it would be kinda nice karma if the ChainBuilder folks gave a little bit of credit once in a while to Apache ServiceMix on which its based. James http://logicblaze.com/ Open Source SOA

James, Even though the ChainBuilder ESB is designed to be container neutral, we choose Servicemix as the JBI container for our initial release because it is from Apache and it has well established developer base. We have no intention to be a JBI container provider. We have not been shy away that Chainbuilder ESB builds on top on the Servicemix. In fact, I tried to put some credit in Servicemix web site a while back ago, I wasn’t able to do it because of the web site error. Regards, Eric Lu www.chainforge.net

James,

Even though the ChainBuilder ESB is designed to be container neutral, we choose Servicemix as the JBI container for our initial release because it is from Apache and it has well established developer base. We have no intention to be a JBI container provider. We have not been shy away that Chainbuilder ESB builds on top on the Servicemix.

Cool, thats good to know thanks! I just thought it'd be nice to mention your use of Apache ServiceMix in the odd ChainBuilder TSS post now and again.

In fact, I tried to put some credit in Servicemix web site a while back ago, I wasn’t able to do it because of the web site error.

Regards,

Eric Lu
www.chainforge.net

Great! :). Incidentally we've moved the ServiceMix wiki over to Apache servers now so hopefully you'll be able to login and contribute http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/SM/Site James LogicBlaze Open Source SOA

James,

Even though the ChainBuilder ESB is designed to be container neutral, we choose Servicemix as the JBI container for our initial release because it is from Apache and it has well established developer base. We have no intention to be a JBI container provider. We have not been shy away that Chainbuilder ESB builds on top on the Servicemix.

Cool, thats good to know thanks! I just thought it'd be nice to mention your use of Apache ServiceMix in the odd ChainBuilder TSS post now and again.

We use many open source technologies in ChainBuilder ESB. We have a licenses directory in our product installation to acknowledge them all. It is kind hard to mention all in our short announcement. But since the JBI container is the core foundation in our ESB runtime, we will consider crediting Apache Servicemix in our future TSS post. I like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the most important open source products or libraries used in ChainBuilder ESB. Eclipse is used as the IDE framework. Apache Serviemix is used as the JBI container and also the basis for the HTTP/SOAP component. Apache Derby is used as the embedding database. Tomcat is used to run the Admin Console servlet. Google Web Toolkit is used to build the AJAX Admin Console application. JavaCC is used to build the finite state machine parser. Groovy is used as the scripting engine. Apache Common and Log4j are used through the code base. We have talked to the folks at LogicBlaze about possible collaboration. We look forward to contributing some of our technologies to Apache Servicemix if appropriate. Regards, Eric Lu www.chainforge.net

... We look forward to contributing some of our technologies to Apache Servicemix if appropriate.

Regards,

Eric Lu
www.chainforge.net

What's about of a contribution from some of your interested Message-Formation-Part ? Maybe existing some conflicts between the distinct OpenSource License-Models (GPL / Apache) ... Nice to hear once again from James Strachan. In a other thread here on TSS we could already see: The complete abstinence from TSS by the last months, has growing the energy for new courageously and hot discussions ;-) Roland http://www.soa-competence-network.de

Heck! The last thing Elmira wants to be reminded of is the chains linkin her hands to the keyboard. Ya'll gots tuh git rid of the 'chain' in yer product name. How 'bout somethin like: "Our Me Too Open Source ESB featurin Ajax stuff"? Has a nice ring to it. You waskals you!