bWise - Project Information


1. Submitter: shalinmangar
2. Project UNIX Name: bwise
3. Project Descriptive Name: bWise
4. License: GNU General Public License (GPL)

5. Project Description: bWise is an Enterprise Application Integration Framework which incorporates Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPELWS).Features include exensive Management tools, Graphical Business Process and Document Specification Diagrammers.

6. Registration Description: bWise is both an Enterprise Application Integration Framework and an Application written from scratch to incorporate and support new technologies and standards such as Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPELWS).. It will boast of features found only in expensive Closed Source EAI frameworks such as extensive Management tools, Graphical Business Process Diagrammers and Document Specification Diagrammers. It is being developed for the Red Hat (India) Scholarships 2004-2005.

An Enterprise Application Integration (hereon referred to as EAI) framework is a platform-neutral e-commerce framework that enables integration across business applications, regardless of platform, operating system or underlying technology. It enables integration, management and automation of dynamic business processes by exchanging business documents and messages among applications, within or across organizational boundaries.

The fundamental activity in EAI is the seamless communication between applications running on diverse platforms and operating system. The framework should take into account the fact that:

  • The applications may be built on different technologies such as COBOL, C/C++, Visual Basic, COM/DCOM, J2EE, .NET etc.
  • The applications may be running on different operating systems such as Unix, Linux, Windows etc.
  • The applications may be using different data storage mechanisms like Flat Files, RDBMS etc.
  • But EAI goes a step above inter-application communication, as that can be usually accomplished through scripting hacks; EAI is more concerned with execution of Business Processes which require effective co-ordination between different applications. This co-ordinated approach, or orchestration, requires precise process (and involved application component) identification, and execution of the process identified through the EAI framework.

    As EAI deals with business processes, which are inherently loosely coupled, hence for integrating these business processes bWise would be implemented on Java/XML/Web Services platform with document oriented communication through Message Queing Services.

    For effective co-ordination of Business Processes, bWise will adopt and implement the Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPELWS). Even though BPELWS is an emerging standard and is largely untested (IBM Alphaworks has an implementation on display), the technology will be incorporated in all the major EAI products owing to the support shown for this standard by all the major companies involved. As Firm believers in Open Source and Open Standards, we will adopt and incorporate this standard into our framework.

    Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPELWS) is a standard endorsed by BEA Systems, SAP AG, IBM, Siebel Systems and Microsoft. More information can be found at the following URLs:
    BEA Systems dev2dev
    IBM Developerworks
    MSDN Library
    SAP
    Siebel

    Implementing the BPELWS specification would also give us an advantage against current Proprietary EAI frameworks in the market as they still have to move on to this new standard. An implementation of this specification will surely be our distinct advantage.

    bWise will contain:

  • An implementation of the Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPELWS) specification which represents a convergence of the ideas of the XLANG (used by BizTalk) and the WSFL (used by IBM and others) specifications.
  • A Document Designer Component for specifying document specifications and specification transformations.
  • A Graphical Designer Component for graphically defining and diagramming Business Processes and their associated data flows and transformations and converting these diagrams into the format specified by the BPELWS specification. (a.k.a. Microsoft BizTalk)
  • Messaging Services for data transfer in the form of documents.
  • A Distributed Transaction Co-ordinator
  • Support for security features such as Digital Signatures and Certificates etc.
  • Services for monitoring and logging run-time activity. (Use of JMX and log4J will be evaluated)
  • Support for key document formats such as XML, EDI and Flat files (both positional and delimited flat files)
  • Support for major RDBMS such as DB2, Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL etc.
  • Support for LDAP.
  • Support for Screen Scraping to accomodate old COBOL code running on Mainframes also in the Integration process is also envisioned. But this technique cannot be implemented in pure Java, hence this technique may not be included in the stable release version. The technical details regarding this technique is still being looked into and it is still in our roadmap.

    In addition to the above features, a Custom API shall be provided for further tweaking and extension of the core features.
    Technologies Used will be:

  • Java
  • XML/XSL/XSLT/XPATH
  • JMS (Being Evaluated)
  • JMX
  • log4J (Being Evaluated)
  • SOAP/Web Services
  • J2EE Transactions API
  • JDBC
  • bWise may incorporate and extend whole or portions of existing Open Source Software. In that case, care would be taken to incorporate software distributed against licenses approved by OSI and all modifications would be realeased along with the project sources in accordance with the license.


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