Business Process Management

Finally, I have made  the last decision to complete my Open Source BPM Image. One component was clearly missing: An ESB.
Intalios BPM Solution has two possibilities to create connectivity solutions to other systems: JDBC and Webservices. The JDBC development is very comfortable and the creation of webservices works fine. But in the real world, most applications are not accessible via webservices. You need an ESB with which you are able to connect to applications and offer this connection as a service.

I have tried out several open source ESBs and finally decided for Glassfish ESB. Although I have not yet understood all the capabilites of this ESB and are not able to compare the capabilites to all other Open Source ESBs, I have decided for Glassfish ESB for one reason: It offers a graphical development environment. I think it is not up to date any more to develop services by writing XML by hand. Maybe I am spoiled by some commercial ESB solutions. But once you are used to mapping values by drag&drop, it is hard to develop service in a text editor again.

To complete the ESB solution, I have installed Apache ActiveMQ, too. A good messaging component is always helpful.

So here is the overview of my Open Source product stack on my BPM Virtual Image.

My next task is to provide a common database installation for Intalio and Glassfish ESB on the image. Both solutions have their own derby database by default. But this is not a solution for a long-term operation scenario.