Bostech Unveils Integration Software Based on JBI Standard

Published: October 31, 2006

by Alex Woodie

Business-to-business (B2B) software maker Bostech this week unveiled ChainBuilder ESB, a new integration tool designed to function as an enterprise service bus (ESB) for Java Business Integration (JBI) -based service oriented architecture (SOA) environments. The product is in the first round of testing now, with general availability planned for January.

JBI is a new specification being developed to help users create a pluggable Web services architecture and standard packaging for composite applications. While it's based in the open XML and Java languages, it has been avoided by many of the larger integration software vendors, in favor of their own ESBs, according to Wikipedia's entry on the topic.

Bostech, which has been offering enterprise-strength application integration tools to the iSeries community and the entire mid-market for the last several years, decided to make a JBI-based product that supported legacy platforms and the legacy data formats they use.

"Interestingly, since the JBI standard is based on XML messages, integration products to date have centered solely on XML translations," says Eric Lu, Bostech's CTO. "But Bostech understands most integration efforts include strategic backend systems that operate with non-XML data formats. We made sure that this initial offering of ChainBuilder ESB had industry standard editors to manage EDI X12, fixed and variable formats, the formats that organizations with legacy enterprise applications absolutely require. Supporting these unique data formats offers businesses a critical advantage to accelerate the incorporation of their disparate applications entry into an SOA environment."

Also setting the product apart is its reliance on a graphical, as opposed to programmatic, interface. By showing developers how applications will work together from a high-level view, developers will be able to step back and consider the flow of their business application integration and then drill down on each component to define specifics, according to Bostech.

Bostech plans to distribute ChainBuilder ESB under the GPL license, as well as through a subscription or a standard commercial license. An alpha version of ChainBuilder ESB is available for download now, while the generally available version will release January 15, 2007, the company says. Downloads can be had at www.chainforge.net.