Iona upgrades open, closed source SOA technologies

On Monday, Iona Technologies is updating its Artix and Fuse SOA product lines,
which feature the Artix closed source enterprise service bus and the Fuse open
source technologies.

Iona offers a distributed approach to SOA that supports combinations of open
source and closed source software. "We could call that the hybrid approach,"
said Eric Newcomer, Iona CTO.

A key addition to the Fuse product line is Fuse HQ, which serves as a management
console for managing open source products from one console. It also can manage
software such as Web servers. Fuse HQ is based on Hyperic Enterprise technology.

"It's a single management console" that also can monitor Artix software,
said Debbie Moynihan, director of product management for open source at Iona.

With Artix, Iona is adding enhanced governance in the Artix registry and repository.
Enhancements include versioning support, customized metadata, and improved visualization
of deployed Web services.

Also featured in Artix is additional support for enterprise integration patterns,
with capabilities offered such as message splitting and message validation.
This simplifies the use of common patterns for integration developers, Newcomer
said.

Artix features an SOA infrastructure suite, Iona said. With the update, ActiveBPEL
4.0, which is embedded in the Artix
Orchestration software product, now supports BPEL (Business Process Execution
Language) 2.0, which offers capabilities for message attachments and additional
security. Artix Orchestration provides for workflow and service orchestrations.


Iona also has upgraded the mainframe edition of its Artix ESB, enabling users
to get back entire result sets from DB2 stored procedures and better memory
management for PL1 and Cobol.

Other improvements in Monday's rollout include bug fixes and minor enhancements.

Other Fuse products being rolled out include:

-- Fuse ESB 3.3, based on Apache ServiceMix 3.3.

-- Fuse Message Broker 5.0, based on Apache ActiveMQ 5.0.

-- Fuse Services Framework 2.0.3, based on the Apache CXF 2.0.3 project.

-- Fuse Mediation Router 1.3, which is based on Apache Camel 1.3.

New Artix offerings offered as part of Artix 5.1 Advanced SOA Infrastructure
Suite include:

-- Artix ESB 5.1.

-- Artix Orchestration 5.1.

-- Artix Registry/Repository 1.5.

-- Artix Data Services 3.6.3.