WebServices dot org

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"This reference model will help anyone interested in SOA infrastructure by providing a precise vocabulary and structural definition of an ESB that has been field-proven in over 250 live customer deployments," said Hub Vandervoort, Chief Technology Officer of Sonic Software. "This definition permits them to clearly understand the key distinguishing architectural characteristics of an ESB, and how these properties provide a superior platform for distributed, service-oriented computing. It's time for fuzzy thinking about enterprise service buses to be replaced with a precise definition that allows the industry to separate fractional ESBs from the real thing."

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• ESB services may be any of a number of types. Typical ESB services which implement mediation are: XML Transformation, Content-Based Routing and User Defined Mediation.

• ESB services execute within the ESB Container.

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Connected services implement the business logic for ESB-integrated applications. Types of business services include: Web Services, Legacy Systems, JMS (Java Message Service) Applications and all varieties of Application Server Applications. Each of these types of business services can communicate with each other through the ESB, and with ESB services to perform mediation.

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• An ESB service sends and receives messages through references to ESB endpoints and ESB addresses.

• An ESB process is defined by an ESB Itinerary which contains a sequence of Process Steps. Each process step can invoke one (or multiple) ESB services, other ESB processes, or an external Web service.

• Each ESB service can have its entry and exit endpoints changed without requiring changes to their implementations.

• The ESB Endpoint provides the capability for ESB services to send and receive messages with a specified Quality-of-Service. The connection tells what supporting messaging channel is used by an ESB endpoint to connect with an ESB service or a business service. This messaging channel can use an ESB native connection, or for external systems can use Web Service Connection, JMS Connection or JCA (J2EE Connector Architecture) Adapter.

• The ESB Connection employs user configurable asynchronous and synchronous delivery semantics.

• The ESB Message class and the sends and receives associations between ESB endpoint and ESB message create the basic structure for one ESB service to send a message to another ESB service through an ESB service's Dispatcher. The dispatcher manages the sending and receiving of ESB messages between ESB services and external endpoints.

• Industry-standard WSDL (Web Services Definition Language) Definitions can be created for ESB services and ESB processes. This allows the use of standard tools and integration with other SOA infrastructure components such as a UDDI Registry.

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