WebSphere WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus, Version 6.0.1 Operating Systems: AIX, HP-UX, Linux, Solaris, Windows

WebSphere ESB and the enterprise service bus

WebSphere ESB provides the capabilities of a standards-based enterprise service bus.

WebSphere ESB manages the flow of messages between SCA-described interaction endpoints and enables the quality of interaction these components request. Mediation modules within the ESB handle mismatches between requesters and providers, including protocol or interaction-style mismatches and interface mismatches. In an overall SCA-based solution, mediation modules are a type of SCA module that perform a special role, and therefore, have slightly different characteristics than other components that operate at the business level.

Mediation components operate on messages exchanged between service end points. In contrast with regular business application components, they are concerned with the flow of the messages through the infrastructure and not just with the business content of the messages. Rather than performing business functions, they perform routing, transformation and logging operations on the messages. The information that governs their behavior is often held in headers flowing with the business messages. The IBM SOA programming model introduces the service-message object (SMO) pattern for SDOs to support this pattern.

WebSphere ESB supports advanced interactions between service end points on three levels: broad connectivity, a spectrum of interaction models and qualities of interaction, and mediation capabilities. The product supports connectivity between end points through a variety of protocols and application programming interfaces (APIs):

Because it is built on WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere ESB can provide smooth interoperability with other products in the WebSphere portfolio, including IBM WebSphere MQ and IBM WebSphere Message Broker. It can also use IBM WebSphere Adapter solutions to leverage existing application assets, as well as capture and disseminate business events.

Client interfaces included with WebSphere ESB further extend this connectivity:

Other features at the connectivity level perform basic protocol conversion between end points where the protocol used by the requester to dispatch requests (such as SOAP over HTTP) is different from that of the service provider that is to handle those requests (such as SOAP over JMS).


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Timestamp iconLast updated: 13 Dec 2005
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