Iona Artix Extends Legacy Systems

While EAI brokers provide adapters, route messages and handle data transformation, ESB servers can do many of these same things without being forced to bind to a single container or code base. The hub-and-spoke architectures used in integration brokers, including messaging-oriented middleware servers, simply are not as adaptable to working with disparate technologies without creating communication bottlenecks. Moreover, legacy brokers have to be deployed wherever an integration layer is required.

Today, one of the most popular ways of opening up a legacy system is to restructure data into XML and serialize it by wrapping SOAP over source code that can transport these XML messages over HTTP. However, this method locks source code into a single protocol and communication layer. Developers also have to manually code the proxies that interact with other systems.

ESB servers such as Iona Technologies' Artix Extensible Enterprise Service Bus provide a protocol-agnostic alternative, giving developers more freedom over which application transports to use. Artix combines various language mappings to proxy objects and generates services for specific implementations. Unlike EAI brokers, these service containers can work independently of each other.

With Artix, developers can leave mission-critical systems alone while creating new interfaces that wrap around old business logic. Artix provides binding support for IIOP, JMS, IBM MQ Series, BEA Tuxedo, Tibco Support Services, servlets and HTTP. In fact, Artix allows multiple protocols from different systems to operate on top of the same business logic at the same time. From a developer's point of view, combining multiple systems in this way is simply a configuration issue.

Artix supports mainframe languages, client/server architectures and Web technologies under its services-oriented architecture (SOA) model. By binding code through JCA adapters in J2EE application servers, Artix can communicate with packaged applications as well as mainframe systems. What's more, Artix supports mainframe COBOL and PL/I code directly through APIs that generate Web services in those languages and that run on mainframes. On IBM z/OS mainframes, Artix also provides WSDL binding to COBOL and PL/I copybooks. WSDL files created from copybooks can be used to generate COBOL or PL/I code mappings for Web service implementations. With Artix, mainframe developers can use legacy code and turn it into service containers.

By generating fixed bindings on WSDL files, Artix can send messages between the Web service and the legacy system at the lowest possible application level. Developers only see that Artix intercepts the same binding methods used by their legacy systems without affecting any code on either side. For instance, a Tuxedo-based trading system that uses RPC code to connect to its client front ends can be configured to interact with a new Web service client by simply connecting it to Artix. In this case, the Artix runtime that works with Tuxedo internally runs proxies between the old format used by the client and the Tuxedo trading service to create a new application layer. Through a WSDL definition in Artix, developers can use whatever language mapping they prefer to interface with the Tuxedo trading system.

Native data types from the Tuxedo system are also hidden from developers.

By feeding a CORBA binding into Artix's runtime kernel, Artix Designer can automatically create a WSDL contract and equivalent WSDL data types for all CORBA IDL data types. The data type sets that Web service applications see are data types defined by WSDL and not the original data types used by legacy systems. After data-driven methods are defined in a WSDL file, what is left are the message pipes that developers need to use to connect to another system. Developers do not have to work with any underlying XML code since the Artix implementation code is defined in methods that contain all the data formats. Essentially, Artix creates a middleware abstraction layer between legacy interfaces and Web service code.

Iona's two-year-old channel program provides technical support to software integrators, including pre-sales design support for systems, project delivery staff and dedicated technical account managers that can assist partners with larger customers. Iona requires that its business partners be experts in SOA development methods and have integration experience with some of the technologies that the Artix software supports. An Artix deployment typically begins at $10,000 per CPU.