FAQ

AIM

Application Integration and Middleware

API

Application Programming Interface

B2B

Business-to-business is the term given to the software and architectural principles used to integrate applications, legacy application and databases between enterprises as opposed to within an enterprise (see EAI). The integration, in this case, is more loosely coupled and typically of a transactional nature, e.g., submitting an electronic purchase order, checking inventory levels or monitoring the status of an order.

BPEL

Business Process Execution Language is an XML-based language for the formal specification of business processes and business interaction protocols. BPEL extends the Web Services interaction model and enables it to support business transactions. It is the result of a cross-company initiative between IBM, BEA and Microsoft to develop a universally supported process-related language.

CLA

Contributor License Agreement see: http://www.apache.org/licenses/

Drools

A rules engine implementation. The idea is to expose a DroolsComponent at some service/interface/operation endpoint in ServiceMix then let it perform rules based routing, or other actions as required.

EDA

An Event Driven Architecture is an approach for designing and building applications in which events trigger messages to be sent between decoupled applications. Event messages are typically sent using a publish-and-subscribe method such as JMS topics. EDA interactions are asynchronous in nature, whereas the loosely-coupled SOA interactions are usually synchronous (request/response). In EDA transactions, messages can be queued and delivered later.

EAI

Enterprise Application Integration is the term given to the software and architectural principles used to integrate applications, legacy application and databases within the enterprise as opposed to between enterprises (see B2B). Commercially, application suites like SAP and Peoplesoft fall into this category, as does custom integration software developed by in-house personnel.

ESB

Enterprise Service Bus

GA

General Availability: used to specifically describe the status of a release that has passed the requisite quality assurance cycle and is now available for download and support through LogicBlaze.

Geronimo

The Apache Geronimo application server. See http://geronimo.apache.org/

Groovy

A scripting language for Java2 platform. Making features similar to Python, Ruby and Smalltalk languages available to developers in a Java-like syntax.

J2EE

Java 2 Enterprise Edition, old name for Java EE

Jabber

Open Source instant messaging component

JAX-WS

JSR 224: Java API for XML-based Web Services

Java EE

Java Enterprise Edition

Java SE

Java Standard Edition

JBI

Java Business Integration (described in JSR 208)

JCA

The JCA Java Connector Architecture provides the most efficient way of thread pooling, resource pooling, transaction handling and consumption on JMS and other Resource Adapters.

JMS

Java Messaging Service API

JMX

Java Management Extensions provides tools for building distributed, Web-based, modular and dynamic solutions for managing and monitoring devices, applications, and service-driven networks.

JSR 208

Java Specification Request #208, "defines a standard meta container for SOA-based applications through the Service Assembly, also known as a composite service description. JBI enables collaboration between different integration technologies through standard Message Exchange Patterns (MEP) and Service Provider Interfaces (SPI)s for Service Engines and Binding Components." (http://java.sun.com/integration/download/index.html)

MIB

Management Information Base. When SNMP devices send SNMP messages to the management console, it stores information in this file or database. The MIB collects and contains information on managed objects.

MOM

Message Oriented Middleware

NMR

The Normalized Message Router is the component which routes normalized messages from a source component to its eventual destination using some kind of routing policy to decide which endpoint to use.

NMR broker

The Normalized Message Router, in its role as a broker for exchanges.

NMS

The Normalized Message Service is the infrastructure for transporting data and messages of different types in a standard way, to their appropriate interfaces and adapters.

OEM

Original Equipment Manufacturer (a LogicBlaze partner)

Orchestration

The automated coordination and management of composite applications components that participate in a business process. Orchestration is often most important in long running business processes where the number and type of exception conditions are greatly increased over traditional short lived business transactions. An orchestrated process will often NOT roll back all the work that has occurred at the time of a given business exception. Rather it will follow one or more rules and execute compensating transactions and/or accept the state of the process as satisfactory at the time of the exception.

POJOs

Plain Old Java Objects

Quartz

Open source job scheduling system that can be integrated with, or used along side virtually any J2EE or J2SE application.

Reflection

The reflection API represents, or reflects, the classes, interfaces, and objects in the current Java Virtual Machine. This API is handy if you are writing development tools such as debuggers, class browsers, and GUI builders

Routing

Intelligent or content-based routing is the process of making appropriate path and/or destination decisions based on the content of the message being transported. The path/route taken will is decided by the ESB after analyzing the message content and metadata.

RSS

RDF Site Summary, or Rich Site Summary, or Really Simple Syndication - A lightweight XML format for distributing news headlines and other content on the Web.

SAAJ

The SOAP with Attachments API for JavaTM (SAAJ) 1.2.2 provides the API for creating and sending SOAP messages by means of the javax.xml.soap package. The SAAJ API allows a client to send messages directly to the ultimate recipient using a SOAPConnection object, which provides a point-to-point connection to the intended recipient.

SOA

A service-oriented architecture is a software architectural concept where composite web applications are developed as a collection of services that can be independently developed, deployed, discovered and even replaced. The services typically support one aspect of a business requirement or process and while the internals of the service can be implemented in any number of ways, the interface to other components that use the service generally conforms to a standard such as Web Services.

SOAP

Protocol for exchanging XML-based messages over a computer network, normally using HTTP.

Spring

An Open Source framework for developing Java applications, especially favorable to POJOs. See http://www.springframework.org/about

TCK

Test Case Kit

Transactionality

Traditionally transactionality refers to a grouping of events where ALL events are required to complete successfully. In the event that even one of the events fails, the effect of each event is undone and the system is rolled back to its state before the transaction began. The JBI specification provides for the reliable end-to-end delivery of messages (i.e., message transactionality). Note: the JBI 1.0 Draft specification assumes a single JVM/JBI for transactionality since the standards for distributed transactions are not yet mature. However, the JBI specification does not preclude distributed transactions.

Transformation

Data Transformation is the process of taking data from one representation and translating it into another, while retaining the integrity of the information. This is most often required when applications use semantically similar data in different formats, e.g. application A identifies an "Employee" by driver's license number while application B identifies an employee by social security number. The transformation component offers the flexibility and opportunity to change data to any desired format for any desired reason.

UDDI

Universal Description, Discovery and Integration Is A Web-based distributed directory that enables businesses to list themselves on the Internet. Similar to the yellow pages.

Web Services

Web Services refers to a suite of XML-based standards that allow applications to exchange information in a platform independent way. Early work in Web Services focused on standards for service description (WSDL), deployment and discovery (UDDI). The effort has expanded to include standards for security, reliability and management among others. Web services are typically invoked over the Internet using standard protocols, most often SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol).

WSDL

Web Services Description language.

WSIF

Web Services Invocation Framework: a Java API that enables dynamic invocation or updating of a Web Service at runtime. It follows the semantics of WSDL as much as possible. It is meant to be used when the semantics of WSDL do not suffice and need to be extended.

XFire

XFire is an easy-to-use SOAP framework that offers high performance.

XSLT

XML based language used for transforming XML documents. The original document is not modified in the process of building a new document based on the information in the original.

XSQL

Tool for turning SQL queries into XML or for inserting/updating XML into a database.