SAN FRANCISCO, JAVAONE(SM) CONFERENCE, May 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) and the Project Open Enterprise Service Bus (Open ESB) community today announced the next preview release of Open ESB, the standards-based next generation integration platform. Open ESB is an industry- leading open sourced enterprise service bus (ESB) implementation developed under open community process. The latest release, Open ESB 2.0 Preview, allows developers to integrate Web services and enterprise applications as loosely coupled composite applications, thereby making large-scale implementation of service-oriented architecture (SOA) principles manageable in a heterogeneous world.
SAN FRANCISCO, JAVAONE(SM) CONFERENCE, May 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) and the Project Open Enterprise Service Bus (Open ESB) community today announced the next preview release of Open ESB, the standards-based next generation integration platform. Open ESB is an industry- leading open sourced enterprise service bus (ESB) implementation developed under open community process. The latest release, Open ESB 2.0 Preview, allows developers to integrate Web services and enterprise applications as loosely coupled composite applications, thereby making large-scale implementation of service-oriented architecture (SOA) principles manageable in a heterogeneous world.
Open ESB includes a standards-compliant Java(TM) Business Integration (JBI) runtime and a variety of components and technologies designed to increase business agility and reduce overall integration costs. Furthermore, many of the features developed in Project Open ESB will be made available in future versions of Sun's Java Composite Application Platform Suite (Java CAPS), the company's commercially supported product offering for customers building integration and composite application solutions.
"The availability of Open ESB 2.0 Preview represents the commitment of Sun and the thriving Open ESB community to developing openness and greater interoperability in an area of the integration stack where it has been lacking," said Jim McHugh, vice president of software infrastructure, Sun Microsystems. "Software integration challenges are becoming increasingly complex due to evolving market conditions and the rise in mergers and acquisitions, creating immense challenges for CIOs looking to leverage existing investments and integrate disperse systems. Open ESB offers their developers the choice and flexibility needed to embark on SOA initiatives based on their unique circumstances by leveraging open source technologies and integrating best of breed components from ISVs."
Open ESB includes new features and tools to help enable the development and deployment of composite applications while leveraging existing applications and systems. Specifically, the open integration platform offers:
— Increased interoperability with third-party components and platform expansion opportunities that help enable developers to create additional plug-in components to fit specific tasks — Greater integration with other open source software offerings, including Sun-led projects such as GlassFish(TM), which offers an integrated runtime for Open ESB, and NetBeans(TM) , which provides developers with a single design tool to build, deploy and test an end-to-end composite application — A viable alternative to proprietary ESB platforms that, through its transparent product development process, helps prevent vendor lock- in issues for developers and helps enable independent software vendors (ISVs) to extend established open platforms with customized offerings to meet specific customer needs
Open ESB 2.0 Preview is available today for free download at: http://open-esb.org. It is also included in the Java Application Platform SDK Update 3 Preview 2, which is available at: http://java.sun.com/javaee/downloads/index.jsp. Open ESB now includes NetBeans 6.0 IDE Preview release-based tools as well as updated version of the runtimes for JBI, Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) Service Engine, Intelligent Event Processing (IEP) Service Engine, Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Binding Component and many other components. This combination of Open ESB, GlassFish V2 and the NetBeans architecture provides Java technology developers with powerful and quick access to building SOA-based composite applications. For a complete list of new Open ESB features and additional capabilities, visit: http://open-esb.org.
For more information about Sun's Java CAPS commercial product, please visit http://www.sun.com/javacaps
Mozilla Firefox OS wants to be open, free, and modern. Also known as "Boot to Gecko" or B2G for short [1], this open source alternative to major smartphone operating systems uses known technologies to enable fast and easy distribution. At the same time, it aims to keep resource consumption low to help manufacturers equip their devices with cheaper hardware.
Mozilla is clearly aiming in the direction of the emerging markets – that is, threshold countries where smartphones are still rare and low prices offer a big advantage in the marketplace. Mozilla is not interested in offering an app store or payment services itself but points to the fact that mobile network operators or other stakeholders can build these services themselves.
The Mozilla Foundation sees itself as a developer and supplier of software, not a service provider. This opportunity for more control over the services that are provided with the phone creates a revenue model for the phone vendor that isn't available through Android or iOS.
With this clear separation, Mozilla Firefox OS looks ready to offer a product that is distinctly different from the other smartphone operating systems currently on the market. The question remains as to how the Foundation will finance development in the mid- to long term, if it is not earning on the system itself or on the services.
The Firefox OS simulator [2] (Figure 1) has been available as a plugin for the normal Firefox browser for more than six months. As a testbed, the simulator is quite exciting for developers who don't want buy a smartphone and install the Firefox OS on it, and it is also useful for application development. The first version revealed a fast and usable graphical interface that the established smartphone systems rivaled only in terms of the plethora of applications available.
Figure 1: In the Firefox OS simulator, a browser add-on, interested developers can take their first steps with a few mouse clicks.
Considering the simulator runs on a powerful PC, an interesting question presents itself as to how the Firefox OS and any applications developed on the simulator will behave on real phone hardware, which often has a much weaker hardware basis. However, this turns out not to be a problem, as the two Geeksphone devices [3] Keon and Peak (Figures 2 and 3) prove.
Figure 3: … only the color (white for the Peak, orange for the Keon) and the logo on the back mark the difference.
The heart of Firefox OS is – not surprisingly – Mozilla's web engine Gecko. All applications with which a user interacts on Firefox OS are web applications built with JavaScript, CSS, and HTML, which the Gecko engine then brings to life (Figure 4).
The engine-to-hardware connection is implemented by a new layer called Gonk. It uses quite well known libraries and interfaces to access the hardware. For driver access to specific hardware, Mozilla has adopted a similar approach to Ubuntu with its Touch distribution for cellphones and tablets [4]: It uses existing drivers and libraries that are already available for Android versions on the corresponding hardware. Thus, a Linux kernel runs at the lowest level.
The ZTE Open C Firefox phone costs less than $70. The integrated developer environment in Firefox makes Firefox OS ideal for users who always wanted to develop their very own apps.