Apache ServiceMix ESB "Apache Orchestra"

Apache .. One of the most famous open source foundation in software. As an Apache fan, I believe that Apache lead the software industry not only the open source communities. The strength of apache is became from strength of its community. That's why I choose today to talk about what I called Apache "Orchestra" or "Apache ServiceMix" ESB.

I was so lucky to start with Apache its journey to provide the software community and industry with the most powerful ESB which inspire a lot of communities to use it and build their own ESB also encourage one of the largest software companies like Redhat to build their middleware platform based on Apache ServiceMix.

I will try in brief to tell you about Apache ServiceMix history and architecture and in the following post I hope to share together more details about Apache "Orchestra"

History

In the end of 2007, Apache launched "ServiceMix Kernel" project as an implementation of OSGi core framework specification. The first GA release was on September 18th, 2008.

The Servicemix Kernel was off to a great start, eventually however by spring 2009 the project grew to the point that it was thought best to leave Servicemix and join it to the Apache Felix community. At this time the Servicemix Kernel project was renamed to "Karaf".

Once established in the Apache Felix community, Karaf again started to grow and mature and Apache decide to make use of this success and build their own ESB a separate project from Karaf and back again to the old name “ServiceMix” this occurred in the period from spring 2009 to mid-2010.

The current version of ServiceMix fully supports the OSGi framework. ServiceMix is lightweight and easily embeddable, has integrated Spring Framework support and can be run at the edge of the network (inside a client or server), as a standalone ESB provider or as a service within another ESB. ServiceMix is compatible with Java SE or a Java EE application server.

The productized and supported release of ServiceMix 4 which is Fuse ESB which started by FuseSource.

In June 2012, Red Hat Inc. announced that it had acquired FuseSource from Progress Software Corporation. Following the acquisition, Fuse ESB was rebranded as JBoss Fuse, and became available for download at the JBoss developer website or the Red Hat customer portal.

The current release of ServiceMix is “ServiceMix 6.1.0”

Apache Orchestra 

Apache ServiceMix is an enterprise-class open-source distributed enterprise service bus (ESB) based on the service-oriented architecture (SOA) model which provides:

• Federation, clustering and container provided failover
• Hot deployment and lifecycle management of business objects
• Vendor independence from vendor-licensed products
• Compliance with the JBI specification JSR 208
• Compliance with the OSGi 4.2 specification through Apache Felix
• Support for OSGi Enterprise through Apache Aries

Main Features

• Reliable messaging with Apache ActiveMQ
• Messaging, routing and Enterprise Integration Patterns with Apache Camel
• WS‐* and RESTful web services with Apache CXF
• OSGi-based server runtime powered by Apache Karaf

Through additional installable features, ServiceMix also supports:

• BPM engine via Activiti
• Full JPA support via Apache OpenJPA
• XA transaction management via JTA via Apache Aries
• Legacy support for the JBI standard (deprecated after the ServiceMix 3.x series) through the Apache ServiceMix NMR that includes a rich Event, Messaging and Audit API

Applications for ServiceMix can be built using:

• OSGi Blueprint
• OSGi Declarative Services
• Spring DM (legacy)