WPS and a Bunch of Specs From IBM
I have been attending an IBM WebSphere Process Server training this week and here is the residue from what was taught.
WebSphere Process Server (WPS) is IBM's answer to the ESB, whoever has designed the product has probably not heard of the saying - "Make things as simple as possible but no simpler" because my assessment is that it is an extremely complex product. Nevertheless, it is a feature-filled product that provides capabilities on SOA and a whole new set of related specs. It has evolved from WebSphere InterChange Server (ICS) but transcends the EAI space as it uses WebSphere Application Server (WAS) as the underlying runtime. The components built on WPS are turned into J2EE modules and components during deployment. A significant benefit of using WAS is that WPS can be clustered, unlike ICS that had no clustering features by itself.
As with other IBM products, WPS too is resource hungry requiring 2 GB RAM for a development machine.
The Specs Arrive
In order to consolidate its position in the SOA area, IBM along with BEA has authored the following specs (except EMD and CEI which are IBM-only) and WPS implements all of them.
SCA: Service Component Architecture is a component model used to wrap components and expose them as Services. This is true for Java, WSDL and other WPS components. Other implementations of this spec are coming up, details are available at www.osoa.org.
SDO: Service Data Object is an API to access the elements in Business Objects (BO). Business Objects are data structures in WPS that carry data. They are implemented using XML schemas. The SDO spec does not mandate on how the Business Object is to be modeled.
EMD: Enterprise Metadata Discovery is an API to expose the meta-data of data structures such as database tables and XML schemas. This API is used by the WebSphere adapters to get the application details and create the WPS Business Objects.
CEI: Common Event Infrastructure is an IBM standard for monitoring. It provides a framework for capturing events and publishing them to different consumers. Events can be turned on/off for all WPS components.
Despite the negative points on the product's complexity, it should score on robustness as it is built on top of WAS and with IBM's aggressive selling and licensing policies (including giving away free licenses to existing ICS customers), there is going to be no stopping this product from getting a large customer base.
WebSphere Process Server (WPS) is IBM's answer to the ESB, whoever has designed the product has probably not heard of the saying - "Make things as simple as possible but no simpler" because my assessment is that it is an extremely complex product. Nevertheless, it is a feature-filled product that provides capabilities on SOA and a whole new set of related specs. It has evolved from WebSphere InterChange Server (ICS) but transcends the EAI space as it uses WebSphere Application Server (WAS) as the underlying runtime. The components built on WPS are turned into J2EE modules and components during deployment. A significant benefit of using WAS is that WPS can be clustered, unlike ICS that had no clustering features by itself.
As with other IBM products, WPS too is resource hungry requiring 2 GB RAM for a development machine.
The Specs Arrive
In order to consolidate its position in the SOA area, IBM along with BEA has authored the following specs (except EMD and CEI which are IBM-only) and WPS implements all of them.
SCA: Service Component Architecture is a component model used to wrap components and expose them as Services. This is true for Java, WSDL and other WPS components. Other implementations of this spec are coming up, details are available at www.osoa.org.
SDO: Service Data Object is an API to access the elements in Business Objects (BO). Business Objects are data structures in WPS that carry data. They are implemented using XML schemas. The SDO spec does not mandate on how the Business Object is to be modeled.
EMD: Enterprise Metadata Discovery is an API to expose the meta-data of data structures such as database tables and XML schemas. This API is used by the WebSphere adapters to get the application details and create the WPS Business Objects.
CEI: Common Event Infrastructure is an IBM standard for monitoring. It provides a framework for capturing events and publishing them to different consumers. Events can be turned on/off for all WPS components.
Despite the negative points on the product's complexity, it should score on robustness as it is built on top of WAS and with IBM's aggressive selling and licensing policies (including giving away free licenses to existing ICS customers), there is going to be no stopping this product from getting a large customer base.
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