Various colleagues have blogged extensively on the forthcoming release of WebSphere ESB 6.0.2 – see the posts from Adrian, Chris, Andrew and Dave. Frankly, if you are interested in WESB at all then you should really be reading those blogs, since these four guys are top sources of information on the subject.
Although I’ve played with WebSphere ESB, I haven’t yet had cause to use it in the context of my day-to-day work, since I’ve been with Message Broker customers for much of the year. However, I do frequently come across the requirement for WebSphere Process Server to communicate with the Broker, and the new native WMQ bindings support provided in WPS and WESB 6.0.2 is going to simplify that. I can see that the option of connecting directly to a queue manager (rather than going through the MQLink from the SIBus) will simplify HA scenarios, one of which I’m looking at with a customer at the moment.
Incidentally, Process Server can of course already communicate with Message Broker using a variety of methods – off the top of my head they would be HTTP, JMS over MQ, and JMS via the MQLink (and the Broker’s JMS nodes can be configured to read from SIBus destinations, too). This new feature adds another option which improves the flexibility of WPS and WMB solutions.
Thanks for the compliment Andy. Andrew, Adrian and I are part of the development team for WebSphere ESB and Dave and I are working closely with customers using WebSphere ESB. We will try to keep people up to date with the latest news!
Andy,
I am curious to here about the scenarios where WPS is having to communicate with MB. What are the key differentiators for these products? How does one decide what to use when? These are not cheap products at upwards of 80K per processor. how do customers justify buying both with so much overlapping functionality?
Regards,
-Sandeep
Hi Sandeep,
Here’s my personal take (not IBM’s)
Message Broker and WPS sit in different layers of the architecture. WPS can be thought of as a process engine and Message Broker as a tool for building an ESB.
We have deliberately included a lot of functionality in both products so that if your requirements for a product stray slightly outside a strictly defined architectural boundary, you can solve your problems without having to buy another product.
But if your requirements truly do call for a process engine and an advanced ESB, then you’re right: using both Broker and Process Server may be an appropriate approach.
Excellent response there from Richard. Here’s my own personal take…
There are a couple of areas where the products do not overlap. In particular, stateful processing aspects of business processes are often better handled by WPS; high-speed stateless processing being better served by WMB. WMB may also provide richer transformation and support for complex non-XML message formats which makes it more appropriate for some scenarios than WPS.
There is definitely a case for using both products in tandem (I’m doing so with a customer right now). However, it will obviously depend on your specific circumstances as to whether you choose one or other, or both. We’re always happy to help customers to determine a best fit – and that does not always involve using both.
Hi everybody,
I have been told that WPS 6.0.2 will support the deployment of JCA adapters in cluster (I am using the flat file adapter and WMQ binding). Is it true ?
Its July 2008, I’m using the Flat File Adapter. It works on standalone, but doesn’t seem to work on a cluster.
Actually, the Inbound operation seems to work, but the Outbound just doesn’t seem to.
BTW, the version now is 6.0.2.3
Ryan