This is surprising since it was rumored that both Synapse and AXIS2 were to be replaced by another mediation engine as well as the fact that everything would be REST / JSON.
It now seems that this is not the case. Does this mean this is an intermediary version?
The successor to the Enterprise Service Bus was under development and a new product was launched at the WSO2Con USA 2017. It is called WSO2 Enterprise Integrator and in the blog we will take a look at what is actually in the product.
What is WSO2 EI?
Product EI is an unified distribution of WSO2 Enterprise Integrator, Application Server, Data Services Server alongside Analytics, Business Process and Message Broker runtimes. With the capability of shared components directory with profile based management of each runtime.
In short, it’s ESB, DSS, AS with the runtimes of three other products, DAS, BPS and MB.
This is visible when we look at the main tab. We clearly see the Applications (AS functionality), Proxy and Service Bus functionality (even strikingly similar to the current WSO2 ESB (5.0.0).
More surprising we even see the AAR service which is an indication that we still have Axis2 included in the product. A quick test with current ESB CAR file confirms that Synapse / Axis2 is still the Medation / Webservice engine in the product.
We believe this to be true since it is not on Carbon 5 but rather on Carbon 4.4.14 . So it is likely that this is a first step in the process to a new product.
Integration Galore
There is a lot we can say about WSO2 EI, most notably the integration of the BPS, MB and DAS products. The startall.sh or startall.bat file will start all products. The latter three will be started with profiles as shown in this windows script
:startServers
start %CARBON_HOME%binintegrator.bat --run
timeout /T 10
start %CARBON_HOME%wso2analyticsbinwso2server.bat --run -Dprofile="analytics-default"
timeout /T 10
start %CARBON_HOME%wso2business-processbinwso2server.bat --run -Dprofile="business-process-default"
timeout /T 10
start %CARBON_HOME%wso2brokerbinwso2server.bat --run -Dprofile="broker-default"
There is a new structure in this case with a main directory for WSO2 EI and subdirectories under /WSO2 for each of the products.
Directory of C:UsersRobDesktop 2wso2ei-6.0.0-m2wso2
02/07/2017 01:57 PM <DIR> .
02/07/2017 01:57 PM <DIR> ..
02/07/2017 12:32 PM <DIR> analytics
02/07/2017 11:38 AM <DIR> broker
02/07/2017 11:38 AM <DIR> business-process
01/31/2017 03:57 PM <DIR> components
01/31/2017 03:57 PM <DIR> lib
02/07/2017 12:34 PM <DIR> tmp
In each of these directories you will find the product structure again. This however results in an almost 1 GB installation (clean install).
By default the products are installed with a port offset of 1 between them. On a localhost, these are that addresses for the management UI:
- WSO2 EI https://localhost:9443/carbon
- WSO2 DAS https://localhost:9444/carbon/
- WSO2 BPS https://localhost:9445/carbon/
- WSO2 MB https://localhost:9446/carbon/
Compatibility
We quickly tried out some CAR files we had on our local machines and they worked without a hitch. This does not mean that everything is necessarily compatible. A thorough test on a multitude of artifacts should give more insight on the compatibility of existing artifacts (on ESB 5.0.0) to WSO2 EI.
API Management
Like the current ESB, the WSO2 EI also has the possibility to point to an external API Manager. In that case the gateway and publisher point to an API Manager outside of the ESB.
<APIManagement>
<!--Uses the embedded API Manager by default. If you want to use an external
API Manager instance to manage APIs, configure below externalAPIManager-->
<Enabled>true</Enabled>
<!--Uncomment and configure API Gateway and
Publisher URLs to use external API Manager instance-->
<!--ExternalAPIManager> <APIGatewayURL>http://localhost:8281</APIGatewayURL> <APIPublisherURL>http://localhost:8281/publisher</APIPublisherURL> </ExternalAPIManager-->
Conclusion
WSO2 Enterprise Integrator seems to be an all-in-one product for some of the most commonly used products in the enterprise integration space. It offers you Service bus, Business Processing, Data integration and application-services together with guaranteed delivery and monitoring capabilities in a complete setup.
Products like WSO2 Identity Server, WSO2 API Gateway and others can complement this Enterprise Integrator offering to create an architecture for most, if not all, of your integration needs.
Please have a look and download it from http://wso2.com/integration
If you have any questions about this blogpost contact us via the comments section of this blog. View also our WSO2 Tutorials, webinars or white papers for more technical information. Need support? We do deliver WSO2 Product Support, WSO2 Development Support, WSO2 Operational Support and WSO2 Training Programs.
Thanks to Thijs Volders for his contribution to this blogpost.
