Open ESB 2.0 beta has been released. Checkout http://open-esb.org or http://java.sun.com/integration/openesb2_0/. Download it today and provide us feedback

Application Server

Open ESB allows you to leverage the reliability, scalability, resiliency, deployment, and management capabilities of an industrial strength Java EE application server. The Open ESB runtime that is packaged into Glassfish leverages its transactional, clustering, and load-balancing capabilities to provide a robust solution for your deployments. Protect your existing investment by virtualizing the services of your  transactional EJB or Web Applications using the JavaEE Service Engine. The JavaEE Service Engine transparently registers your EJB or Web Application webservice endpoints with the Open ESB runtime thus allowing new services to talk seamlessly to your existing EJB or Web Applications.

Enterprise Mashup (a.k.a Composite Application)

An Enterprise Mashup is a single self-contained artifact that contains other sub-artifacts, services that make up a SOA “application.”, the deployment plan, and information that describes the routing . Think of it as an SOA “super .jar.” Using the design-time tools that come with Open ESB, the user can create Enterprise Mashups that re-purpose and combine existing ERP or legacy services orchestrated with new business logic using service-oriented design patterns and business events with Web 2.0 presentation services without re-writing or replacing. Leverage the power of Web 2.0 presentation services with Ajax and Java Server Faces components to create rich user interfaces. Use BPEL to orchestrate services with transactional and collaborative behavior, be they legacy services, new services, or existing Java, EJB, or Web Applications. Introduce human interaction into your  business process chain by scheduling and managing work-lists using the WorkList Manager component tools. Use transformation services to virtualize existing functionality and create new derived services. Leverage the Business Activity Manager component tools and specify Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and handle complex events using Intelligent Event Processing. Create data warehouses and enterprise data mash-ups using complex extraction, transformation, and loading patterns. Leverage scripting to enable capabilities into your enterprise mash-ups. Talk to 'silos' and different applications using HTTP, SOAP, REST, File, FTP, SMTP, SNMP, JMS, and multiple different protocol connector components. Create applications for different Vertical and Horizontal markets like Health-Care, Telecommunications, Financial Services, Insurance Services, Banking, etc. by leveraging the SWIFT, HL7 binding components  and a whole host of other connector components. Enable your enterprise mash-ups to consume or provide services that inter-operate with .NET, DCOM, or CORBA services . Leverage the power of Aspect-Orientation to weave your service fabric with different policy groups into existing composite applications.

Composite Application (a.k.a. Enterprise Mashup) Editor

The Composite Application Editor that comes with Open ESB helps the user 'wire-together' and create new enterprise mash-ups from derived virtualized functionality. It allows a user to virtualize functionality from  different services, orchestrate application logic to control how the composed services interact with each other to produce the new, derived functionality. The Composite Applications thus created are a composition of rich elements from individual web services or selected functionality from within another application, or entire legacy systems that are exposed as an aggregation of virtualized services. Implemented using top-level code composition, these rich elements could span tiers distributed in a SOA. The Enterprise Mash-up editor removes the difficulty of wiring these different enterprise services together by providing a rich user interface where the user can 're-wire' the internal connections, or create new ones. This allows the user to focus his efforts on providing rich business functionality in his services and 'wire-together' and/or 'rewire' his services using the Enterprise Mash-up Editor.

JBI Bus

Open Enterprise Service Bus (Open ESB) hosts a set of pluggable component containers, which integrate various types of IT assets. These pluggable component containers are interconnected with a fast, reliable, in-memory messaging bus called the Normalized Message Router (NMR) also referred to as the JBI Bus. Service containers adapt IT assets to a standard services model, based on XML message exchange using standardized message exchange patterns (MEP) based on abstract WSDL. This improves interoperability and allows a mix-and-match of technologies from various vendors. When sending and receiving messages outside the JBI environment, the engine component containers communicate using the in-memory NMR messaging infrastructure and pass messages out to the client through an appropriate  binding component container. When communication is entirely within the JBI environment, no protocol conversion, message serialization, or message normalization is necessary because all messages are already normalized and are in standard abstract WSDL format.

Management, Monitoring and Administration

Open ESB provides the ability to centrally monitor, manage and administer the distributed runtime system. The administration tools available both in NetBeans and the Administration Web Console provide the ability to install/uninstall new Component Containers on-the-fly and manage their lifecycle. The administration tools also provide the ability to deploy/undeploy Enterprise Mash-ups (a.k.a. Composite Applications) and manage their life-cycle. In addition Open ESB component containers and Enterprise Mash-ups allow their runtime-configuration to be exposed and administered dynamically using both NetBeans and the Web Administration Console both in a stand-alone and in a clustered environment. Message Exchange statistics exposed through these administration tools allow you to get a consolidated view of your Enterprise. These administration tools allow the user to query and view metrics, alerts, and errors from the infrastructure, component containers, enterprise mash-ups, and the service endpoints and take appropriate corrective action.

Third Party Component Containers

Open ESB is based on the JBI specification which defines a standard way of plugging in third-party component containers on-the-fly onto the Open ESB Meta-Container providing dynamic installation and un-installation of component containers. This takes Java EE to the next level by bringing together new pluggable component containers from different vendors, and creates a market where a user could deploy the best-of-breed implementations which inter-operate without any vendor lock-in using the Open ESB meta-container infrastructure. In addition to the components and containers developed at Sun, Open ESB comes with a number of components and containers developed by third-party Open ESB partners.

Web Service Bus

Open ESB extends the capabilities of the bare JBI reference implementation with a whole host of additional capabilities and services including support for Reliable Messaging and WS-Security among others. This allows enforcement of endpoint Quality of Service metrics to all services exposed from Open ESB and also support for the WS-* stack. Open ESB allows communication over the wire to remote services through HTTP transports among others. It is therefore easy to consume and provide services not only between other ESB instances, but also provides interoperability with services exposed using other technologies including .NET. This promotes seamless integration between services inter-operating in your Intranet, Extranet, and the Internet.

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