Evaluating the messaging and routing functions of an Open Source Enterprise Service Bus (ePub)

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject Computer Science - Commercial Information Technology, grade: 1,0, University of Regensburg, language: English, abstract: Enterprise Service Busses and related concepts like Service Oriented Architectures are increasing in popularity. Businesses are facing new challenges and networking, inter- and intra enterprise cooperation and collaboration are getting more and more crucial for being ahead of the competitors.
Enterprise Service Buses are providing a necessary, high- scalable and flexible IT architecture for integration, an improved communication, and reducing complexity at least in theory.

The major goal of this project seminar is to examine the practical use of ESB. The first part of this documentation will provide the reader with some theoretical foundations on the Enterprise Service Bus, integration paradigms and some required functions of Enterprise Service Buses.

The following section will then focus on one specific Open Source ESB - the Apache ServiceMix that will be presented briefly. Its main functions and concepts will be examined in detail. Furthermore the setup of a generic development environment, debugging principles and tools will be described.

The following part is the development of an explorative case study that illustrates important features and characteristics of an ESB in a practical way. The focus is to illustrate the routing and messaging capabilities of Apache ServiceMix. Based on an everyday example, the message flow in a restaurant, we are trying to demonstrate development principles, analyze useful patterns and also illustrate common pitfalls and challenges.

In the final part, lessons learned and some generic recommendations for possible applications of ESBs are presented. The project team is observing that ESB is a highly important integration model especially in Service Oriented Architectures. Furthermore for some single and clearly defined scenarios the functions provided by Open Source ESBs are already satisfactory. On the other hand side, ESBs are still emergent, there are a lot of instability, complexity and a lack of development tools. The recommendation is to clearly evaluate ESB and also optional other solutions before its practical application in a real world scenario.