SeeBeyond Sticks To Open Standards

SeeBeyond is one of the few vendors that offers a comprehensive set of products that successfully marries integration and SOA. SeeBeyond's newest Integrated Composite Application Network (ICAN) Suite 5.0 enables development of corporate applications that require integration with existing systems that want to take advantage of SOA.

The suite is comprised of nine different products and offers multiple integration methods, including batch integration, database integration to multiple devices and direct application-to-application integration.

SeeBeyond has maintained market differentiation by sticking to open standards throughout its toolset, and offers one of the only J2EE-certified integration solutions. ICAN includes a J2EE-certified application server for the development environment, and the ICAN suite is capable of scaling up, taking advantage of the J2EE threading model to handle thousands of transactions.

The suite's tools also run on most J2EE-certified application servers, including those from BEA Systems, Sun Microsystems and IBM. All of the components generated by the suite use WSDL. What's more, all the tools use the same framework and maintain the same user management and development environment. The suite also runs on Windows, Unix and mainframe platforms.

The ICAN suite primarily uses XSLT to generate transformations between different data sources. XSLT is good enough to generate most transformations, but in some cases, Java code can be generated to create specific transformations. Developers also can hand-code or extend the Java code generated by the suite.

ICAN has built-in support for various industry languages such as EDI, Business Objects Documents and HL7. The suite also has some collaboration features to help users learn how to integrate systems. Developers don't have to write a lot of code with this suite and instead can focus their attention on integrating components and mapping data sources.

ICAN's eVision tool allows developers to build composite applications that can interact and interface with users to deliver task assignments in a workflow. EVision uses a straightforward description of logic by representing it with graphical icons. Using a drag-and-drop editor, business analysts and developers can actively participate in the development process.

The editor has a collapsible view when users are modeling elements to simplify views of processes. As developers build rules, the suite synchronizes the code with existing objects. Developers rely on a work-list manager to handle the interfaces of each rule. The manager can put locks on rules and execute them based on user commands on a form.

After forms are developed and are placed into workflows, the ICAN suite publishes them in HTML. Every page that interacts with users is published with an interface. At runtime, the information that's entered is maintained globally so forms can be accessed from any server.

EVision can run with ePortal, another server offered in the suite. EPortal is not as robust as a Vignette or IBM portal, but it integrates well with the suite and was specifically designed to execute composite applications.

The eInsight tool runs all the orchestrations. It represents notation in Business Processing Modeling Notation (BPMN) and maps it one to one with BPEL so users do not have to generate the BPEL code itself. EInsight can also import and export BPEL from other enterprise modeling tools. The tool also generates and runs the executable code from the models.

The suite also has a Business Rule Designer that maps rules between components. When functions are exposed in new components, the suite makes them ready for attachment into business processes. Developers can also build exception handlers and compensation logic into the process logic.

All the models are built in the same environment,be it SQL, BPEL or XLST,and run on a Java application server. The suite also arrives with the eWay tool, which uses Java Connector Architecture (JCA)-compliant adapters and can merge changes from older systems into pre-built solutions.

CHANNEL PROGRAM SNAPSHOTS
>SEEBEYOND INTEGRATED COMPOSITE APPLICATION NETWORK SUITE
PRICE: $250,000 to $500,000
DISTRIBUTORS: Direct from vendor
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CHANNEL OVERVIEW: Monrovia, Calif.-based SeeBeyond's channel managers and engineers assist partners in sales and integrations, and its direct-sales force participates in joint sales calls. SeeBeyond provides an array of sales tools, collateral and training programs at its solution provider Web site.

Note: Vendors can earn up to five stars for technical merit and five for their channel program. If the average of these two scores is four stars or greater, the product earns CRN Test Center Recommended status.