Java Business Integration (JBI) Specification Early Draft Review

New Members Join JAVA Business Integration Specification Effort

Santa Clara, California, USA. October 27, 2004.

Sun Microsystems, Inc., the creator and leading advocate of Java technology, today joined with Java technology leaders to announce the availability of the Early Draft Review of the Java Business Integration (JBI) specification, Java Specification Request (JSR) 208. The group also announced that Apache Group, IONA and JBoss have joined the effort dedicated to developing an open standard for business integration on the Java platform. The specification extends the Java platform to incorporate standardized integration capabilities, and marks an important milestone in enabling Java technology use based on service-oriented architecture (SOA).

The JSR 208 project, which is chaired by Sun, is being jointly developed through the Java Community Process (JCP) program by over 22 prominent vendors, and individual developers of Integration and Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) technology, including Novell, Oracle, SAP AG, SeeBeyond, Sonic Software, Sybase Inc., TIBCO Software, and webMethods Inc. Today Apache, JBoss, and IONA announced they have joined the JSR 208 Expert group.

"The goal of the Java Business Integration initiative is to do for the integration space what J2EE did for the field of Java application development and deployment; namely, deliver the benefits of choice, flexibility, interoperability, code reuse, reduced complexity, and lower cost", said Mark Bauhaus, vice president of Java, Web Services at Sun. "The Early Draft Review of JSR 208 shows our commitment to develop this technology in an open and standards-based way through the Java Community Process."

Implementations based on JBI will help to provide IT organizations with higher levels of portability and reuse of integration technologies not achievable with many of today's integration products. Java Business Integration components such as business process engines based on the BPEL specification, rules engines, and routing and transformation engines from multiple vendors can be easily combined into a single solution, reducing the cost of application integration and enabling best-of-breed solutions.

Java Business Integration Paves the Way for SOA

The Early Draft of the JSR 208 specification is available today at http://www.jcp.org for industry comment. It defines a unified, pluggable architecture for building integration technology on the Java platform and specifies standard interfaces for integration components like BPEL engines, transformation engines, or routing engines, to be plugged seamlessly into an integration container. JBI gives customers the ability to assemble a best-of-breed solution, or to extend their integration solutions by adding new integration components. The high level of flexibility, choice, and extensibility in JBI will lead to more robust integration solutions with reduced vendor lock-in, and lower costs. Additionally, by building upon Java standards, JSR 208 allows developers to leverage their Java and J2EE development skills, to reduce the time and effort required to solve complex integration problems.

Additionally, JSR 208 defines a shared service oriented architecture messaging facility that is the foundation for standards-based SOA. Customers are increasingly demanding an infrastructure that allows them to build composite SOA applications from reusable services. A SOA infrastructure layer, commonly referred to as an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), is key to enabling such reusable services. By combining pluggable SOA Integration components with a SOA infrastructure layer, JSR 208 provides the essential building block for implementing a standards-based ESB. It also paves the path for Java middleware vendors to leverage emerging technologies such as BPEL in their ESB offerings using consistent, standard interfaces.

"The Java Business Integration JSR is very important for standardizing integration technology on the Java platform," said James Strachan, Apache's representative on the Expert Group. "As the ASF is showing with the Apache Geronimo J2EE server, the open source community can make a significant contribution to enterprise technology and is committed to working on the specification alongside with the other members of the Expert Group," added Geir Magnusson Jr., The Apache Software Foundations's representative on the JCP SE/EE Executive Committee.

"Using standard APIs and plug-ins, Java Business Integration provides a foundation for the extensibility features customers need as they move forward with their ESB and SOA deployments," explained Eric Newcomer, CTO, IONA Technologies. "IONA's participation in the JSR 208 process demonstrates the company's support for open and highly flexible standards."

"JBoss is committed to the Java community and its success in establishing standards that will ease development and use of Java technology," said Marc Fleury, chairman and CEO, JBoss, Inc. "At a time when many large vendors are moving to lock in users, JBoss is redoubling its commitment to standards, first with the EJB 3.0 specification, and now with Java Business Integration. We are pleased to contribute the work and expertise grounded in JBoss jBPM to the JSR 208."

"Novell is pleased to contribute to the development of the Java Business Integration specification as a member of the Expert Group for JSR 208," said Loren Russon, director of product management for Novell's exteNd and Nsure product lines. "By addressing the need for standard business integration protocols for different specifications, JSR 208 will advance the reach of Java in the enterprise. We look forward to working with the Java Community as JSR 208 is finalized."

"Oracle continues to drive the direction of Web services and business integration through active involvement in industry standards in leadership positions and as working group participants in organizations such as the JCP, W3C, OASIS, WS-I, OAGI, and RosettaNet," said Don Deutsch, vice president, Standards Strategy and Architecture, Oracle Corp. "Oracle remains committed to offering its customers interoperability based on open industry standards and continues to work closely with other vendors toward that end in initiatives such as JSR 208, Java Business Integration."

"SAP participates in the development of JSR 208 in order to lead the industry toward advanced integration capabilities for business-critical applications based on the J2EE platform. SAP NetWeaver leverages the innovative use of J2EE standards to provide developers with an enterprise services platform for building integration solutions, using BPM and workflow automation to support process agility," said Michael Bechauf, vice president of SAP NetWeaver Standards and JCP Executive Committee member. "SAP NetWeaver will continue to provide open and adaptable frameworks at a lower cost as companies make the transition to Enterprise Services Architectures, SAP's blueprint for Services Oriented Architectures."

"SeeBeyond remains committed to its leadership position in delivering the most unified, open and standards-based integration suite on the market. This is evidenced by the fact that SeeBeyond ICAN 5 remains the only integration server suite to date that has passed the Java Verification Kit and achieved J2EE certification," said Alex Demetriades, Executive Vice President of Products for SeeBeyond. "In this same vein, JSR 208 is an important initiative that SeeBeyond intends to participate in and work closely with other vendors to bring to fruition."

"JBI will do for integration and the ESB what EJBs did for application logic and the application server," said David Chappell, vice president and chief technology evangelist for Sonic Software, the inventor and leading provider of the enterprise service bus (ESB), and member of the JSR 208 expert group. "In addition to enabling an ecosystem of third-party integration service providers, JBI will create a standard for the container model that Sonic developed when we invented the ESB. Because Sonic has been in market with this type of framework for more than two years, the JBI specification benefits from in-field experience of customers deploying mission-critical SOA-based integration projects."

"Most enterprises have invested in packaged, legacy and custom applications that usually rely on an extremely complex and mostly ad hoc architecture that makes it difficult to adjust to changing business requirements," said Aiaz Kazi, general manager of Enterprise Backbone and Business Integration, TIBCO Software Inc. "As an integral part of the Java Business Integration initiative, TIBCO is continuing its pioneering efforts to help customers quickly and easily support new business requirements through a standards-based approach and the creative use and reuse of existing assets — via a service-oriented architecture. JBI embraces the convergence of SOA and EDA, and validates TIBCO's vision of a Real-Time Enterprise Architecture that is the foundation for Predictive Business."

About the Java Community Process

Since its introduction in 1998 as the open, inclusive process to develop and revise Java technology specifications, reference implementations, and technology compatibility kits, the Java Community Process program has fostered the evolution of the Java platform in cooperation with the international Java developer community. The JCP has over 800 company and individual members; more than 250 Java technology specifications are in development in the JCP program, of which 46 percent are in final stages. For more information on the JCP program, please visit http://jcp.org.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision — "The Network Is The Computer" — has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that make the Net work. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com Subscribe to Sun newswire at http://www.sun.com/news/.

JSR 208 Description

Java Business Integration JSR (JBI) extends J2EE with business integration SPIs. These SPIs enable the creation of a Java business integration environment for specifications such as WSCI, BPEL4WS and the W3C Choreography Working Group.

The industry is currently on the path to define standards for business integration that form a new layer of standard metadata in the web services stack. While this work is not complete as yet, the general shape of this standard metadata can be seen in the WSCI and BPEL4WS proposals. The industry needs a standard in this space and we look to the recently chartered W3C Choreography Working Group to drive the convergence of these and other related efforts. The JBI SPIs will reflect the industry consensus that emerges from this work.

This JSR uses the following terms to further classify this standard business integration metadata. The term 'business protocol' is an umbrella term for the metadata used to describe the interaction between a set of business processes that implement the roles of partners within a larger service composition. The term 'abstract business process' is the metadata that describes how a business process, within a business protocol, choreographs its role in a service composition so that its partner processes understand how to interact with it. It should be noted that the term 'business process' in this context means any actor that participates in the business protocol. In finer grained situations, a 'business process' could be something as simple as a data transformation table or a few business rules.

JBI extends the J2EE application packaging and deployment functionality to include JBI Components. JBI Components are an open-ended class of components that are based on JBI abstract business process metadata. The JBI JSR itself does not define how developers code Components. Both standard and proprietary ways of coding Components may exist. A specific class of Component may provide rich business process functionality while another class of Component may provide a specialized integration function like a data transformation table or support a domain specific business rule encoding.

A JBI Application is composed of one or more JBI Components. It may also include J2EE modules as defined by the J2EE Platform.

JBI divides the task of supporting JBI Components into three roles - the JBI Environment, the JBI Machine and the JBI Binding. The focus of the JBI JSR is the role of the Environment and its support for Machines and Bindings. It treats both Machines and Bindings as black boxes that interact with it via Environment SPIs.

The Environment defines a standard internal representation for business protocol messages based on standard business protocol metadata. This representation is an important element of the Environment SPI that links Environments, Machines and Bindings.

JBI Machines are responsible for supporting the lifecycle of a particular class of JBI Components. For instance, if a JSR defines a standard way of coding a Component, then the existence of a Machine supporting this Component model would allow the Environment to add support this Component model. Likewise, a vendor could produce a Machine that supports its proprietary Component model and this Machine could be deployed on the Environment. The Environment provides the base business protocol communication infrastructure that allows Components (through their Machines) to communicate with each other and with external services. The Environment also defines a standard Machine packaging model and a standard Machine deployment and instantiation lifecycle.

JBI Bindings are used by the Environment to communicate with external services via specific business protocol bindings. The role of a Binding is to implement a specific communications binding for the Environment's standard internal representation of business protocol messages. The Environment also defines a standard Binding packaging model and a standard Binding deployment and instantiation lifecycle...

Prepared by Robin Cover for The XML Cover Pages archive. See also JSR 208: Java Business Integration (JBI).

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The group also announced that Apache Group, IONA and JBoss have joined the effort dedicated to developing an open standard for business integration on the Java platform. The specification extends the Java platform to incorporate standardized integration capabilities, and marks an important milestone in enabling Java technology use based on service-oriented architecture (SOA). The JSR 208 project, which is chaired by Sun, is being jointly developed through the Java Community Process (JCP) program by over 22 prominent vendors, and individual developers of Integration and Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) technology, including Novell, Oracle, SAP AG, SeeBeyond, Sonic Software, Sybase Inc., TIBCO Software, and webMethods Inc. Today Apache, JBoss, and IONA announced they have joined the JSR 208 Expert group. "The goal of the Java Business Integration initiative is to do for the integration space what J2EE did for the field of Java application development and deployment; namely, deliver the benefits of choice, flexibility, interoperability, code reuse, reduced complexity, and lower cost", said Mark Bauhaus, vice president of Java, Web Services at Sun. "The Early Draft Review of JSR 208 shows our commitment to develop this technology in an open and standards-based way through the Java Community Process." Implementations based on JBI will help to provide IT organizations with higher levels of portability and reuse of integration technologies not achievable with many of today's integration products. Java Business Integration components such as business process engines based on the BPEL specification, rules engines, and routing and transformation engines from multiple vendors can be easily combined into a single solution, reducing the cost of application integration and enabling best-of-breed solutions. Java Business Integration Paves the Way for SOA The Early Draft of the JSR 208 specification is available today at http://www.jcp.org for industry comment. It defines a unified, pluggable architecture for building integration technology on the Java platform and specifies standard interfaces for integration components like BPEL engines, transformation engines, or routing engines, to be plugged seamlessly into an integration container. JBI gives customers the ability to assemble a best-of-breed solution, or to extend their integration solutions by adding new integration components. The high level of flexibility, choice, and extensibility in JBI will lead to more robust integration solutions with reduced vendor lock-in, and lower costs. Additionally, by building upon Java standards, JSR 208 allows developers to leverage their Java and J2EE development skills, to reduce the time and effort required to solve complex integration problems. Additionally, JSR 208 defines a shared service oriented architecture messaging facility that is the foundation for standards-based SOA. Customers are increasingly demanding an infrastructure that allows them to build composite SOA applications from reusable services. A SOA infrastructure layer, commonly referred to as an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), is key to enabling such reusable services. By combining pluggable SOA Integration components with a SOA infrastructure layer, JSR 208 provides the essential building block for implementing a standards-based ESB. It also paves the path for Java middleware vendors to leverage emerging technologies such as BPEL in their ESB offerings using consistent, standard interfaces. "The Java Business Integration JSR is very important for standardizing integration technology on the Java platform," said James Strachan, Apache's representative on the Expert Group. "As the ASF is showing with the Apache Geronimo J2EE server, the open source community can make a significant contribution to enterprise technology and is committed to working on the specification alongside with the other members of the Expert Group," added Geir Magnusson Jr., The Apache Software Foundations's representative on the JCP SE/EE Executive Committee. "Using standard APIs and plug-ins, Java Business Integration provides a foundation for the extensibility features customers need as they move forward with their ESB and SOA deployments," explained Eric Newcomer, CTO, IONA Technologies. "IONA's participation in the JSR 208 process demonstrates the company's support for open and highly flexible standards." "JBoss is committed to the Java community and its success in establishing standards that will ease development and use of Java technology," said Marc Fleury, chairman and CEO, JBoss, Inc. "At a time when many large vendors are moving to lock in users, JBoss is redoubling its commitment to standards, first with the EJB 3.0 specification, and now with Java Business Integration. We are pleased to contribute the work and expertise grounded in JBoss jBPM to the JSR 208." "Novell is pleased to contribute to the development of the Java Business Integration specification as a member of the Expert Group for JSR 208," said Loren Russon, director of product management for Novell's exteNd and Nsure product lines. "By addressing the need for standard business integration protocols for different specifications, JSR 208 will advance the reach of Java in the enterprise. We look forward to working with the Java Community as JSR 208 is finalized." "Oracle continues to drive the direction of Web services and business integration through active involvement in industry standards in leadership positions and as working group participants in organizations such as the JCP, W3C, OASIS, WS-I, OAGI, and RosettaNet," said Don Deutsch, vice president, Standards Strategy and Architecture, Oracle Corp. "Oracle remains committed to offering its customers interoperability based on open industry standards and continues to work closely with other vendors toward that end in initiatives such as JSR 208, Java Business Integration." "SAP participates in the development of JSR 208 in order to lead the industry toward advanced integration capabilities for business-critical applications based on the J2EE platform. SAP NetWeaver leverages the innovative use of J2EE standards to provide developers with an enterprise services platform for building integration solutions, using BPM and workflow automation to support process agility," said Michael Bechauf, vice president of SAP NetWeaver Standards and JCP Executive Committee member. "SAP NetWeaver will continue to provide open and adaptable frameworks at a lower cost as companies make the transition to Enterprise Services Architectures, SAP's blueprint for Services Oriented Architectures." "SeeBeyond remains committed to its leadership position in delivering the most unified, open and standards-based integration suite on the market. This is evidenced by the fact that SeeBeyond ICAN 5 remains the only integration server suite to date that has passed the Java Verification Kit and achieved J2EE certification," said Alex Demetriades, Executive Vice President of Products for SeeBeyond. "In this same vein, JSR 208 is an important initiative that SeeBeyond intends to participate in and work closely with other vendors to bring to fruition." "JBI will do for integration and the ESB what EJBs did for application logic and the application server," said David Chappell, vice president and chief technology evangelist for Sonic Software, the inventor and leading provider of the enterprise service bus (ESB), and member of the JSR 208 expert group. "In addition to enabling an ecosystem of third-party integration service providers, JBI will create a standard for the container model that Sonic developed when we invented the ESB. Because Sonic has been in market with this type of framework for more than two years, the JBI specification benefits from in-field experience of customers deploying mission-critical SOA-based integration projects." "Most enterprises have invested in packaged, legacy and custom applications that usually rely on an extremely complex and mostly ad hoc architecture that makes it difficult to adjust to changing business requirements," said Aiaz Kazi, general manager of Enterprise Backbone and Business Integration, TIBCO Software Inc. "As an integral part of the Java Business Integration initiative, TIBCO is continuing its pioneering efforts to help customers quickly and easily support new business requirements through a standards-based approach and the creative use and reuse of existing assets — via a service-oriented architecture. JBI embraces the convergence of SOA and EDA, and validates TIBCO's vision of a Real-Time Enterprise Architecture that is the foundation for Predictive Business." About the Java Community Process Since its introduction in 1998 as the open, inclusive process to develop and revise Java technology specifications, reference implementations, and technology compatibility kits, the Java Community Process program has fostered the evolution of the Java platform in cooperation with the international Java developer community. The JCP has over 800 company and individual members; more than 250 Java technology specifications are in development in the JCP program, of which 46 percent are in final stages. For more information on the JCP program, please visit http://jcp.org. About Sun Microsystems, Inc. Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision — "The Network Is The Computer" — has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that make the Net work. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com Subscribe to Sun newswire at http://www.sun.com/news/. JSR 208 Description Java Business Integration JSR (JBI) extends J2EE with business integration SPIs. These SPIs enable the creation of a Java business integration environment for specifications such as WSCI, BPEL4WS and the W3C Choreography Working Group. The industry is currently on the path to define standards for business integration that form a new layer of standard metadata in the web services stack. While this work is not complete as yet, the general shape of this standard metadata can be seen in the WSCI and BPEL4WS proposals. The industry needs a standard in this space and we look to the recently chartered W3C Choreography Working Group to drive the convergence of these and other related efforts. The JBI SPIs will reflect the industry consensus that emerges from this work. This JSR uses the following terms to further classify this standard business integration metadata. The term 'business protocol' is an umbrella term for the metadata used to describe the interaction between a set of business processes that implement the roles of partners within a larger service composition. The term 'abstract business process' is the metadata that describes how a business process, within a business protocol, choreographs its role in a service composition so that its partner processes understand how to interact with it. It should be noted that the term 'business process' in this context means any actor that participates in the business protocol. In finer grained situations, a 'business process' could be something as simple as a data transformation table or a few business rules. JBI extends the J2EE application packaging and deployment functionality to include JBI Components. JBI Components are an open-ended class of components that are based on JBI abstract business process metadata. The JBI JSR itself does not define how developers code Components. Both standard and proprietary ways of coding Components may exist. A specific class of Component may provide rich business process functionality while another class of Component may provide a specialized integration function like a data transformation table or support a domain specific business rule encoding. A JBI Application is composed of one or more JBI Components. It may also include J2EE modules as defined by the J2EE Platform. JBI divides the task of supporting JBI Components into three roles - the JBI Environment, the JBI Machine and the JBI Binding. The focus of the JBI JSR is the role of the Environment and its support for Machines and Bindings. It treats both Machines and Bindings as black boxes that interact with it via Environment SPIs. The Environment defines a standard internal representation for business protocol messages based on standard business protocol metadata. This representation is an important element of the Environment SPI that links Environments, Machines and Bindings. JBI Machines are responsible for supporting the lifecycle of a particular class of JBI Components. For instance, if a JSR defines a standard way of coding a Component, then the existence of a Machine supporting this Component model would allow the Environment to add support this Component model. Likewise, a vendor could produce a Machine that supports its proprietary Component model and this Machine could be deployed on the Environment. The Environment provides the base business protocol communication infrastructure that allows Components (through their Machines) to communicate with each other and with external services. The Environment also defines a standard Machine packaging model and a standard Machine deployment and instantiation lifecycle. JBI Bindings are used by the Environment to communicate with external services via specific business protocol bindings. The role of a Binding is to implement a specific communications binding for the Environment's standard internal representation of business protocol messages. The Environment also defines a standard Binding packaging model and a standard Binding deployment and instantiation lifecycle... Prepared by Robin Cover for The XML Cover Pages archive. See also JSR 208: Java Business Integration (JBI).