ZapThink Report Finds DataDirect XQuery 2.0 A Key Component for Service Oriented Architecture

DataDirect Technologies, the unparalleled leader in data connectivity and mainframe integration and an operating company of Progress Software Corporation (Nasdaq: PRGS – News), today announced that an independent report from ZapThink on DataDirect XQuery(TM) version 2.0 concludes that the performance challenges imposed by very large XML messages potentially threatens the viability of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) implementations, and that DataDirect XQuery version 2.0 is robust enough to overcome these challenges when working with such messages.

The new study entitled “DataDirect XQuery 2.0, Enabling XQuery for Very Large Messages,” was produced by ZapThink, a leading IT research and advisory firm specializing in XML, Web Services and Service Orientation. “As companies seek to increasingly make use of secure, reliable, process-driven and loosely coupled SOA implementations, they will quickly become aware of the performance penalty that inefficient usage of the XML format imposes,” said Jason Bloomberg, ZapThink senior analyst. “DataDirect XQuery version 2.0 addresses the XML reporting problem of how to provide business visibility into large quantities of XML data in a flexible manner worthy of SOA.”

Read more at: Progress Press Release

DataDirect XQuery 2.0: Enabling XQuery for Very Large Messages

As the quantity of XML in the enterprise dramatically increases, enterprise architects, application developers, and data integration specialists must deal simultaneously with the large number of XML-formatted messages on the network as well as such messages’ increasingly large sizes. The XQuery approach to handling and processing XML is now recognized as one of the best approaches to dealing with the manipulation of information in XML format. DataDirect takes the power of XQuery to a new level in version 2.0 of the DataDirect XQuery tool, adding support for non-XML and non-relational data, XML streaming, and very large message support.

Firms Huddle to Create Open Standard Messaging Protocol

Ron Schmelzer, an analyst at ZapThink in Baltimore, said that AMQP could prove to be a threat to existing messaging specifications if it can deliver on its promise of providing a cheaper, less complex and more heterogeneous alternative.

“From a mind-share perspective, with regard to messaging and interop standards for sure, I think AMQP will be seen as a potential alternative,” Schmelzer said.

Read more at: ComputerWorld

SOA Software Forms an ESB Federation

Governance is provided by SOA Software’s Service Manager, which is now integrated with Network Director, the service mediation technology the company acquired along with Blue Titan in May. “If you deploy Service Manager, you can have all the ESBs interoperate in terms of policy enforcement. [Service Manager] ensures that messages comply with policies and can only be accessed by authorized users,” he said.

ZapThink analyst Ronald Schmelzer said that such a federation mechanism can help companies consolidate disparate ESB implementations. “SOA Software is aiming to bring the industry closer to the vision of truly loosely coupled, composable and abstracted services that move us away from integrating islands of IT functionality,” he said in a June 19 news release announcing the product’s general availability.

Read more at: SD Times

Open Message Queuing on Horizon

However, Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink, of Waltham, Mass., questions whether another specification is necessary. “A key question is whether dealing with such interoperability challenges is best handled at the messaging infrastructure level or at the service interface,” Bloomberg said. “Is this just one more JMS [Java Message Service], which now has several vendor-specific implementations?”

Bloomberg argues that with a protocol specification, somebody still has to go through the effort of building a system. But JPMorgan and other group members maintain that this option is still bound to be less expensive than proprietary solutions and that savvy users can build their own implementations, while others can rely on help from companies such as C24 to provide support and services.

ZapThink’s Bloomberg called AMQP a new specification for defining and developing messaging infrastructure that is intended to be technology-agnostic, open and interoperable. AMQP has implementations on C and C++ and will support C# and Java, sources said.

Read more at: eWeek

BPM inside the belly of the SOA whale, part 2

“Any vendor who wants to have a credible SOA solution in order to build loosely coupled, composite, service-oriented applications will necessarily have to have a business process aspect to their product,” said Ron Schmelzer, a senior analyst at ZapThink LLC. “IBM, Oracle and Microsoft already have this capability as well as vendors like Sonic Systems, Fiorano and SOA Software. Even emerging composite application vendors like SEEC Systems, Webify Solutions, Tenfold and others are adding BPM capabilities to their SOA infrastructure. Vendors need to have process capabilities if they plan to have a credible solution in the space.”

Read more at: SearchWebServices

Tool to manage multiple ESBs readied by SOA Software

“SOA Software’s Network Director looks like middleware for your middleware play. ESBs for ESBs, enterprise middleware integration. A plot that never ends,” said Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink, in an email.

“But Network Director obviates the need for an ESB in the first place — if you have proper service intermediation, who needs an ESB in the first place?” Schmelzer asked. ZapThink has not liked the ESB category because it looked like an extraneous and unnecessary piece of middleware that only perpetuated the integration problem, he said.

Read more at: InfoWorld

Open-Source Message Queuing Protocol Set for Launch

However, Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink, questions whether another specification is necessary.

“A key question is whether dealing with such interoperability challenges is best handled at the messaging infrastructure level or at the service interface,” Bloomberg said. “Is this just one more JMS [Java Message Service], which now has several vendor-specific implementations?”

Bloomberg’s argument is that with a protocol specification, somebody still has to go to the effort of building a system around it. But JPMorgan and friends maintain that this option is still bound to be less expensive than existing proprietary solutions and that savvy user organizations can build their own implementations, while others can rely on help from companies like C24 to provide support and services in a Red Hat- or JBoss-like model.

Neither Sonic nor IBM was able to respond before this article was posted. But in response to word of AMQ last year, Hub Vandervoort, vice president of strategic services at Bedford, Mass-based Sonic Software, said the idea of an open-source message queuing technology “is interesting to some, but open source doesn’t have continuous availability, clustering, etc.”

ZapThink’s Bloomberg called AMQP a new specification for defining and developing messaging infrastructure that is supposed to be technology-agnostic, open and interoperable. “JPMorgan Chase Bank is looking to leverage AMQP for messaging infrastructure that crosses multiple platforms, languages and protocols, and resolves the bottlenecks of dealing with multiple middleware solutions,” he said.

Read more at: eWeek

Rogue services lurk in SOA

Jason Bloomberg, a senior analyst at ZapThink LLC., and another voice warning against rogue services, describes the worst case scenario this way: “Think of a laptop with personal customer information left in a taxi, only now it’s left in a Web service accessible from the Internet. Just as serious.”

This governance view is shared by ZapThink’s Bloomberg, although he finds that not only are rogue services a “very real problem,” but also a present danger.

“We’re seeing them all over the place,” he said, sharing the concerns of Foody. But reflecting Erickson’s view, the analyst argues that it is first of all a management and governance issue.

“These services often don’t have the appropriate management infrastructure in place to ensure their reliability and availability, impacting their loose coupling, and they are also ungoverned, which means they can potentially violate corporate policies of various sorts,” Bloomberg said.

But a second part of the problem in the analyst’s view is the proliferation of Web services by organizations that believe that they are doing SOA when they may only be creating IT chaos.

“Some companies think that all they have to do is build enough services and they’ll grow themselves an architecture, which is the furthest thing from the truth,” Bloomberg said. In his view this ungoverned production of Web services not only creates potential rogue services, but because they are unknowns, they often provide redundant capabilities that defeats the purpose of reuse in SOA.

Read more at: SearchWebServices

W3C Approves Web Services-Addressing Standard

“WS-Addressing is one of those bread-and-butter standards that helps to grease the skids of making Web services work in heterogeneous environments,” said Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink in Baltimore. “It’s been part of the overall WS-* conversation for the past two to three years, so it’s good that it’s finally been ratified by the W3C. The question now is about vendor support of the standard.

“We’ve seen support of the spec by many of the large vendors, but [are] not sure how many of the point-solution vendors of Web services and SOA [service-oriented architecture] products are currently supporting it. Now that it’s been approved by the W3C, hopefully we’ll get as close to a majority of vendors supporting the spec as possible,” Schmelzer said.

Read more at: eWeek