Open Source Solutions

The afternoon sessions are split into a Developer Track and a User Track. I decided to attend the User Track. The first speaker was Shigemoto Fujikura of OGIS International speaking about the S2Mule project that they implemented. As part of an all encompassing project affecting dozens of system, the first target was an HRM system, with the first application being a mainframe skills management system that was being migrated to an ERP system. Microsoft Excel was used as a client by the executive staff against the old system, and they desired to continue to do so under the new system. By using SOA, they were able to define the system boundaries through the system interfaces, and were able to allow MS Excel to access the SOA network [SOAP] using VBA. They began the project with the 2005 open source Mule ESB project, as it allowed them to start small and execute trials to test out decisions quickly.

Searsar2 is a widely popular open source framework in Japan making Java dependency-injection simple with aspect oriented programming. The S2Mule project brings Mule into Seasar2.

Hiroshi Wada of the University of Massachusetts has been working with OGIS International to use modeling techniques to define non-functional properties in SOA separately from functional requirements to allow the reuse of services and connectors in different contexts. The Mule ESB has provided the test platform for their use of UML, business process modeling notation [BPMN], feature models and aspect oriented programming.