DataNucleus AccessPlatform 3.1.0 released

Sky-Tiger

I recently wrote a news story on SearchSOA.com about SwitchYard replacing Jboss ESB. Click that link to read the full article if you want more details. The basic story is that SwitchYard is going to replace JBoss ESB in the JBoss SOA Platform 6. SwitchYard has some significantly better tooling and design compared to the old JBoss ESB, most notably Camel routes. It's possible that Red Hat's newly acquired FuseSource Talent may be able to bolster SwitchYard even more, but that's pure speculation.

Most of the information in the SearchSOA.com article comes from Keith Babo, who is the project lead for SwitchYard. "JBoss ESB 4 is the existing ESB. SwitchYard is fundamentally JBoss ESB 5," he told me, and continued, "Integration is a fundamental part of any SOA project." Babo was good about giving technical details and factual examples (with maybe a pinch of hype). But he's obviously a bit biased by his closeness with the project.

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I'd really like to find out what real users are doing with this new integration project. I know that some folks are already using SwitchYard, or at least playing with it, because they're posting in the JBoss forums for SwitchYard. But so far, I haven't gotten a good sit-down with a user and I'm starting to get the impression that there aren't that many out there yet.

I don't think ESBs in general have fallen out of favor. I know that the old JBoss ESB has a reputation for being sort of hard to start into. Do you think that might be keeping folks away? Is the name change stirring up confusion with railroads and electrical substations? Maybe I'm just not looking hard enough. Is your team using SwitchYard? Do you know one that is? Had you heard of SwitchYard before this article? If so, let us know your impressions of the new JBoss ESB.

Sky-Tiger

SwitchYard version 0.5 was released just this month, and JBoss middleware insiders say there are already enterprise organizations working with SwitchYard and preparing for the switch from JBoss ESB. JBoss plans to completely replace JBoss ESB with SwitchYard starting with JBoss SOA Platform version 6. However, considerable overlap is expected between the release of SOA Platform 6 and the useful life of SOA Platform 5, which may extend the life of JBoss ESB 4.

SwitchYard is set to replace today's JBoss ESB, adding better modeling and services support.
"JBoss ESB 4 is the existing ESB. SwitchYard is fundamentally JBoss ESB 5," said Keith Babo, the project lead for SwitchYard. "Integration is a fundamental part of any [service-oriented architecture] project," said Babo. In his view, enterprise architects need to take a holistic view so they don't lose either the big picture or the details of the whole project. Most organizations have multiple teams working independently of one another, and one team rarely has much insight into what the others are doing. SwitchYard's goal is to make enterprise architects more successful at integration and to improve collaboration.

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Using a graphical user interface, enterprise architects and application engineers can build visual models of their applications that are meant to improve the software engineer's ability to comprehend and communicate the full composition of their applications and also to speed up development and integration projects.

Babo noted SwitchYard's support of Camel routing, BPMN 2, Drools and other tools for messaging, business process management and service orchestration. According to Babo, using these tools and combining them with SwitchYard's visual representation makes adopting SwitchYard less complicated than adopting JBoss ESB.

Babo said one of the main complaints about JBoss ESB was that "the onramp was very severe. If you didn't fully understand the projects coming into it, then it was very difficult to get the concepts that let you really use the power of the ESB." According to Babo, the SwitchYard project is easing these adoption headaches with increased tooling and a more standards-based approach.