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SwitchYard

36 Posts authored by: kcbabo

It's the day before Thanksgiving here in the U.S. and the SwitchYard team is talking turkey with a 1.1.0.Final release.  This release focused on incorporating features and enhancements that didn't make 1.0.0.Final as well as dialing in our wizbang Eclipse tooling (which accounted for ~ 35% of issues resolved in the release).  Next step for the community is the big jump to 2.0, where we already have big work brewing.  More details to follow after we binge on bird meat and emerge from our tryptophan-induced food coma.

 

What is SwitchYard?

SwitchYard is a structured framework for developing integration applications using the design principles and best practices of Service Oriented Architecture.  It integrates really well with Apache Camel and JBoss Application Server, providing a runtime based on the best open source integration and application server options out there.  A slightly longer description can be found here.

 

What's in 1.1?

The team was busy this release, with 167 total issues resolved for 1.1.  A complete list of issues resolved in 1.1 can be found in JIRA.  Here are some of the bigger fish in the pond:

[SWITCHYARD-1729] Security context is not propagated between service calls

[SWITCHYARD-1607] Decision table support missing from Rules component

[SWITCHYARD-1465] Make Context and Message available to bean services on all paths

[SWITCHYARD-1600] Add non-model URI configuration parameters to all integrated SY gateways

[SWITCHYARD-1729] Security context is not propagated between service calls

[SWITCHYARD-1450] Provide confidentiality after successful WS decryption

[SWITCHYARD-1576] Allow registration of Channels for stateless sessions

[SWITCHYARD-1607] Decision table support missing from Rules component

[SWITCHYARD-1728] Bump schema versions for model changes made since 1.0

[SWITCHYARD-1759] Exchange cannot be injected into bean services

[SWITCHYARD-1601] Make RESTeasy gateway aware of runtime and application faults

[SWITCHYARD-1600] Add non-model URI configuration parameters to all integrated SY gateways

[SWITCHYARD-1604] Support imported WSDL definitions

[SWITCHYARD-1738] Add support for configuring SwitchYard version using runtime components

[SWITCHYARD-1797] connector lines drag and drop interaction

 

Where Do I Get This Goodness?

The SwitchYard Downloads page has all the SwitchYard bits and pieces.  I highly recommend following the Installation Guide to install the runtime and tooling.  The guides are short, moderately useful, and 67% free of spelling and grammatical errors.


How Do I Learn More?

SwitchYard and OpenShift come together like peanut butter and jelly in our latest episode in the SwitchYard Video Series ...

 

The SwitchYard team helped put together a set of labs for Red Hat Summit this year focused on getting started with SwitchYard.  The objective of these labs was to take attendees with no experience with SwitchYard and help them become productive users of the project.  The labs set the stage by walking through an example application and explaining what you need to know followed by hands on development and configuration of common integration application scenarios.  We received some great feedback from attendees and the lab was one of the top-ranked sessions at Summit this year.  Here's what one attendee had to say*:

 

"I loved it. It was much better than CATS. I'm going to do these labs again and again."

 

With that kind of praise, you owe it to yourself to try these labs out!  The labs and lab guides are hosted in the learning repository for SwitchYard on GitHub:

 

https://github.com/jboss-switchyard/learning/tree/master/summit2013

 

 

 

 

* OK, I was the one that said that.

Getting sick of all these 0.x minor releases of SwitchYard?  Well good news ... we're getting all major up in here with a 1.0.0.Final release!  Truth be told, the bits have been available for weeks now, but we spent some quality time with the tooling and documentation after the runtime was done to make sure 1.0 was done right.

 

What is SwitchYard?

SwitchYard is a structured framework for developing integration applications using the design principles and best practices of Service Oriented Architecture.  It integrates really well with Apache Camel and JBoss Application Server, providing a runtime based on the best open source integration and application server options out there.  A slightly longer description can be found here.

 

What's in 1.0?

This was a monster release for the team, with 184 total issues resolved for 1.0.  Here are the most important updates for 1.0:

  • The project has changed from LGPL to the Apache License v2.0.
  • Camel components not distributed directly with the project can now be added as extension modules to the SwitchYard subsystem, allowing any Camel component, data format, etc. to be added to SwitchYard easily.
  • Camel routing services can now configure multiple routes per service.  This allows complex routing logic to be broken up into separate routes and also makes our XML routes play nicely with the Fuse Camel editor.
  • HTTP-based gateways (REST, SOAP, HTTP) added support for proxy configuration, basic authentication, and NTLM.
  • All gateways have been updated to include support for starting and stopping individual bindings.  This allows you to stop/restart processing on a given endpoint from our admin clients.
  • The SOAP Gateway now supports MTOM, SOAP w/ Attachments, and WS-Addressing.
  • Generating Java interfaces from WSDL is now supported in the visual editor for all the folks that like to design top-down.
  • The JCA gateway has been tested and documented for use with ActiveMQ for message inflow and outbound.
  • The SwitchYard admin API has been updated to include JMX support.
  • Multi-step transformation is now supported, so if you don't have a transformer to go from A -> C, but you have A -> B and B -> C, then we can get the job done.
  • BPM services now support customizable correlation keys so you don't have to pass the process instance id back into the process with each subsequent request.
  • Service throttling is now supported to govern throughput for any service.
  • We went through the public API with a fine-tooth comb to make it nice and clean.  There will be no backward incompatible changes made to APIs or configuration for 1.x.
  • Our tooling gets more beautiful with each release, and this one is no exception. 
  • An EAR deployment example has been added to our quickstarts and is now tested as part of our release test suite.
  • If you don't want to put clear text passwords in your switchyard.xml, you can use our properties support in combination with the AS 7 password vault to protect that sensitive info.
  • Security can now be configured on a global or per-service basis with the addition of named security configs to switchyard.xml.

 

A list of all the issues that went into 1.0 can be found in JIRA.

 

Where Do I Get This Goodness?

The SwitchYard Downloads page has all the SwitchYard bits and pieces.  I highly recommend following the Installation Guide to install the runtime and tooling.  The guides are short, moderately useful, and 67% free of spelling and grammatical errors.

 

How Do I Learn More?

kcbabo

SwitchYard 0.8 Released

Posted by kcbabo Mar 26, 2013

SwitchYard 0.8.0.Final has been deployed to Nexus and is available via the project downloads page.  There's some great stuff in this release with a total of 98 issues resolved.  The bedrock of all SwitchYard releases, the Release Overview, is available with the usual background and details on what's new in SwitchYard 0.8.

 

The next release for the SwitchYard project is gonna be a biggie.  We are very close to fulfilling the goals we set for a 1.0 release of the project.  Close enough that a 0.9 release will not be necessary and 1.0 will be the next community release.  In fact, our nightly builds are already sporting a 1.0.0-SNAPSHOT version.  It's the perfect time to give 0.8 a try and contribute feedback for 1.0.

 

Cheers,

The SwitchYard Team

We're trying something new in the SwitchYard project with our most recent release.  The team has created a new video series which is focused on helping new users get started with the project and for existing users to gain a deeper understanding of SwitchYard features and capabilities.  There are three guiding principles for the series:

 

  • Live Action : each video provides a live demonstration of a SwitchYard concept or feature.  The idea is to complement the documentation through live action and provide additional context where it's needed.  (N.B. : we violate this rule in the very first episode which is more of a trail map than a demonstration).
  • Informal : to a certain extent, quantity is better than quality here.  We're gonna make them useful, but we won't spend much time doing 1000 takes or polishing the videos in post-production.  That said, I have submitted an expense request for celebrity cameos in the videos.
  • Community-Focused : we belted out six videos right away based on what we thought might be useful.  Where we go from here is something we would like our community to decide.  If you have burning questions or areas where you feel a demonstration would really add to the documentation, please let us know in the forums or file a JIRA.  Here's an example request.

 

All of the videos can be found on the SwitchYard Video Series page.  Here's one of the videos in the series to see what they are all about:

 

I'm a bit late with this blog entry as I wanted to put the finishing touches on our new video series before announcing the 0.7 release.  More on the video series in the next blog post. :-)  As for 0.7, we are aiming at quicker release cycles heading toward our 1.0 release, so expect a new one every 6-8 weeks.  We lost a bit of time due to the Red Hat holiday break, but still managed to resolve 85 issues over eight weeks.  As always, the SwitchYard Release Overview is available for 0.7 with all the juicy details.

 

Cheers,

The SwitchYard Team

SwitchYard 0.6 has gone final and is stuffed like a Thanksgiving turkey.  The issue bucket for 0.6 was a veritable horn o' plenty, with 157 issues resolved over the course of the release.  Here's a sampling of the features:

 

  • Security policy now supports pluggable authentication providers with PicketLink and PicketBox integration out of the box.
  • Transaction policy definitions for starting a global or local transaction around a service.
  • Transaction policy on service references allow you to declare whether a transaction should be propagated or suspended on invocations from your services.
  • Clustering of SY instances.
  • A remote service invoker.
  • A ton of work around improving the visual editor and adding support for new features in 0.6.
  • Added a RESTEasy gateway.
  • Added a vanilla HTTP gateway.
  • Added dynamic operation selectors which allows the service operation to be derived from message content/context.
  • Operation-level drill down for service monitoring.
  • Enhancements to the rules and bpm components around fact insertion and event notification.
  • Easy peasy deployment and testing of quickstarts.
  • Improved Camel integration in core and test framework.

 

If you'd like to learn more, check out the latest edition of our critically acclaimed Release Overview series for details, examples, and links to additional information.

 

Cheers,

The SwitchYard Team

We are now feature complete and (hopefully) bug fix complete for the SwitchYard 0.6 release.  The big difference between Beta1 and Beta2 is the introduction of clustering.  Transaction policy also got even more powerful as you can now specify transaction policy for service references (e.g. suspend a transaction when a service is invoked from your transactional service).  There were 50 issues resolved between Beta1 and Beta2, so plenty of bug fixing and minor enhancements in there as well.  Check out the Release Overview page for more detail.

 

No further work is planned for 0.6 pending feedback and issue reporting from the community.  If no issues surface, 0.6.0.Final will be out in 7-10 days.

Looks like the SwitchYard presentations from JUDCon Boston are now available.   I posted the slides to the blog some time back, but the video helps fill in the blanks and also includes live demo action.  If you want to see the absolute latest and greatest, check out the SwitchYard session during JBoss Integration Week tomorrow at 1:00pm ET.

 

Future of the Enterprise Service Bus at JBoss

 

 

Enterprise Services Made Easy with SwitchYard

 

The team has been banging away on 0.6 and the end is nigh.  Here's a quick look at the features available in 0.6 Beta1:

 

  • Security policy now supports pluggable authentication providers with PicketLink and PicketBox integration out of the box.
  • Transaction policy definitions for starting a global or local transaction around a service.
  • A ton of work around improving the visual editor and adding support for new features in 0.6.
  • Added RESTEasy gateway
  • Added a vanilla HTTP gateway
  • Dynamic operation selectors
  • Operation-level drill down for service monitoring
  • Enhancements to the rules and bpm components around fact insertion and event notification
  • Easy peasy deployment and testing of quickstarts
  • Improved Camel integration in core and test framework
  • More bug fixes than you can shake a stick at

 

We started the typical Release Overview page for 0.6, but it's still a work in progress.  Definitely check it out for more info and updates as we move closer to 0.6 Final over the next couple weeks.

SwitchYard had a good showing at both JUDCon and JBoss World this year.  Our presentations were well received, feedback was tremendous, and all of our live demos worked. :-)  If you weren't able to make it this year or you want a refresher, here's the collection of SY presos:

 

The Future of the Enterprise Service Bus at JBoss

Tom and I gave a talk on what we're up to with JBoss ESB and SwitchYard, where things are headed in the future, and tips on how to make the transition.

 

Enterprise Services Made Easy with SwitchYard

An introduction to SwitchYard with a healthy amount of show-and-tell.

 

SOA at Scale with SwitchYard

An examination of the different elements of scaling an enterprise application (it's about more than runtime performance) and how SwitchYard can help.

 

The first two sessions were recorded via video camera and the last was recorded via screen capture.  I haven't seen the videos posted yet by the production team, but hopefully that will go up soon.  All three sessions had demos and cheesy jokes and it's just not the same if you can't watch/listen to those while looking at the slides. 

The wheels managed to stay on the cart after a couple weeks in Beta so it's time to cut 0.5.0 Final.  Key features for this release include a mammoth tooling upgrade with a visual application editor, support for declarative security policy, and a bunch of new gateway bindings.  All told, there were 139 JIRAs resolved as part of this release, which I think makes it our biggest in the history of the project.  Maven artifacts have been deployed, bits are up on the downloads page, and the documentation has been updated.

 

All the juicy details can be found in the SwitchYard 0.5 Release Overview, which contains a list of all the new features with pointers to examples, documentation, and such.  Take a look and see what it's like to live large with SwitchYard.

 

Cheers,

The SwitchYard Team

kcbabo

0.5 Beta 1 is out!

Posted by kcbabo Jun 27, 2012

0.5 Beta 1 bits have been posted to our Downloads page.  There are 113 issues resolved in 0.5 (so far).  I'm working on a revamped Getting Started guide and Release Overview for 0.5 Final, which should drop in a couple weeks.  In the meantime, this is a great time to kick the tires and help us improve things for Final.  Here are some useful links:

 

 

Lots and lots of stuff in this release, but I would have to say that our new visual application editor makes the biggest impact. 

 

 

screenshot.jpg

 

 

We've received some great feedback at JUDCon this week and we're looking forward to people trying the Beta build and giving feedback that we can fold into 0.5 Final and 0.6.  So please get your hands dirty and let us know what you think!

The SwitchYard team has been hard at work in the 0.5 release crafting some cool Eclipse-based tooling for creating SwitchYard applications.  The goal of the tooling is twofold:

 

  1. Provide a visual representation of a service-oriented application.  Integration and SOA apps can get quite sophisticated and it's easy to lose sight of the composition of your application without a visualization.
  2. Streamline the development process by making it quick and easy to create service-oriented applications from a visual representation.

 

We still have a ways to go, but I think what's there now is quite impressive.  Here's a quick video I put together showcasing some of the features being worked on.   Do your eyes a favor and watch it expanded in HD and not embedded.

 

https://vimeo.com/42670606

 

 

 

As always, we would love to hear your feedback.  Swing by the forums and let us know what you think.

 

http://community.jboss.org/en/switchyard?view=overview

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