Open-Source Middleware Is Ready For Consideration

Yet increasingly, open source middleware is standing up to the pros. The muscle behind it includes Linux, the Apache Web Server, the JBoss and Apache Geronimo application servers, and the Apache Axis2 messaging stack. Open source is especially capable when IT shops choose Web services for the integration process.

At Goodwill Industries, a federation of 205 organizations, CIO Steve Bergman wanted to avoid an exhaustive and expensive software integration project that would absorb millions of dollars. But without more integration, he couldn't support Goodwill's effort to extend services to member stores and training to employees over the Web.

Bergman turned to the Apache Tomcat application server and Liferay, an open source code portal, to integrate his Microsoft SQL Server databases and back-end systems through Web services. Goodwill saved a significant amount in costs. "Instead of spending our budget on software licenses, we spent it on customizing our production systems for our mission," he says.

That work resulted in Goodwill's MyGoodwill site, which launched last year. It offers online training, searchable content on best practices and knowledge management, and collaboration tools to 80,000 Goodwill employees. Visitors find "centers of practice" where they can learn such things as how best to set up clothing displays in a store.

The brains behind the site is a search and reporting application capable of downloading thousands of XML and HTML reports and documents continuously to hundreds of concurrent users. When development began on the application in early last year, Bergman admits he wasn't sure "open source code software and Liferay were mature enough to handle all of this."

Turns out they were. "This is a major enterprise application," Bergman says. "And it's working beautifully."

Same Job For Less

Goodwill's approach, however, may not be everyone's model for what's needed in middleware. Financial transactions and intensive logic applications may require more point-to-point connections, and that's a speciality of messaging systems such Microsoft's MQ, IBM's WebSphereMQ, and Sonic Software's Sonic ESB. These products typically tie into other middleware, including WebSphere Business Integration, webMethods' Broker, and Sonic Orchestration Server, to move messages between running apps.

But message brokers and systems usually come with an assembly of point-to-point adapters that have big price tags. Open source middleware providers are trying to do the same job for less. JBoss, for example, is building out its JBoss Enterprise Middleware Stack, which includes JBoss Transactions for transac- tion management and JBoss Rules for governing services.

WSO2, a middleware provider that builds products based on open source code from the Apache Software Foundation, offers a Web service-oriented application server, Tungston, based on Axis2 and intended to handle a variety of XML messages.

WSO2 is following up Tungston with Titanium, an enterprise service bus based on the Apache Synapse incubation project. With Titanium due out this quarter, the WSO2 middleware set will get the ability to allow "two Web services to talk to each other, provide security and other quality-of-service functions," much like some commercial projects, says Sanjiva Weerawarana, CEO of WSO2.

Large businesses that have, say, an accumulation of mainframe file and database systems, a large library of ERP applications, and many custom Cobol apps may find they need a commercial middleware suite with an enterprise service bus. A commercial enterprise service bus can field some of the data transformations that need to take place between systems and act as an intelligent router, figuring out how to connect one system to another, says Adam Michelson, director of service-oriented and enterprise architecture at Optaros, a systems integration firm. And commercial middleware still provides many of the point-to-point connections for legacy applications.

"But when it comes to integration via Web services, open source is really dominant," Michelson says. Organizations that turn to Web services "are often willing to compromise on quality of service at first" in exchange for quick and low-cost integration, he says.

Standards Game

When organizations such as Goodwill decide to integrate via Web services, they're connect- ing disparate systems by follow-ing a common set of standards that govern the Web. "Open source is good about building to standard," Michelson says. So adopters of the Web services approach aren't locked into a vendor's proprietary links.

Those standards continue to evolve and include WS-Security, Web Services Description Language, WS-Reliability, and others coming out of the IETF and W3C standards bodies.

In addition to JBoss and WSO2, other open source middleware stacks include LogicBlaze Fuse and IBM's Gluecode. IBM acquired Gluecode to compete with JBoss and the popular LAMP stack: Linux, Apache Web Server, MySQL database, and the Perl, Python, and PHP scripting languages.

Middleware vendors Sun Microsystems and BEA Systems also have managed to keep a foot in the open source waters. Sun makes several pieces of its Java Enterprise System freely available, while offering technical support for a fee.

Bill Roth, BEA Systems' VP of WebLogic tools, says there's no need to choose strictly between commercial or open source code. His company is broadening WebLogic to work with different types of open source code, such as PHP applications. It's demonstrated PHP running on WebLogic Application Server and expects to have PHP support built into its tools and server offerings for developer test drives by year's end.

At Optaros, open source middleware customers are most likely to go with JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite, LogicBlaze Fuse, WSO2 Tungston, and MuleSource's Mule, an enterprise service bus that's landed early customers in financial services, Michelson says. Ross Mason, a lead developer of Mule, says "less code is better for performance," thus Mule is a small, high-performance messaging core to which modules may be added to connect to specific systems, such as IBM's WebSphere MQ or Tivoli systems management.

Mule supports Web Services Business Process Execution Language, allowing applications to be connected to particular business processes via Web services.

As open source choices in middleware proliferate, it might seem too cluttered a field from which to choose. But Goodwill's Bergman says finding technical support is one of the strengths of the open source route.

"When we had a problem and were under the gun, we would open up the development effort to the open source community and find we'd have it solved over the weekend," he says, referring to an issue that involved customizing the Liferay portal's directory.

Open source certainly isn't the best choice in every integration project. But when Web services are in the game, open source is ready to play.