WSO2 ESB what if for?

Question

I have previous experience with JAX-WS, but I am struggling to understand:

1) What WSO2 ESB does? The official documentation didn't help me very much.

2) Is it a sort of manager that adds security to web services? Where should I place my web service?

3) I was using Netbeans+Glassfish to deploy Java Web Services, but I don't really know what to do with this WSO2 ESB?

If anyone could briefly explain it to me, would be great. Many thanks

Answer 1

Maybe this will be useful to someone else:

1) WSO2 ESB is an Open Source Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). It allows administrators to simply and easily configure message routing, ie linking the different components of an SOA system.

2) It is more about integration of services. ESB can host your services but you can deploy them separated from service mediation (more popular/correct).

3) You can keep Netbeans+Glassfish, but there is also a plugin for Eclipse: "WSO2 Developer Studio".

Answer 2

WSO2 is an open source enterprise service bus (ESB) product. There are many ESB products out there, some open source (eg Mule), some not (eg Oracle Service Bus).

ESB products provide an integration mechanism for dealing with business processes that span complex networks of systems and services, spread across diverse platforms and protocols. They offer the concept of an orchestration or flow, usually an XML based way of defining processes, that define the interaction with multiple underlying systems. Many ESB products will also include an IDE for for defining flows in a graphical manner. Along with the flows, the ESB should provide a range of system and protocol adapters, ways to route and transform messages, error handling, transaction handling, security, and a management console to administer and monitor the whole lot.

If you want to get a feel for what ESBs are about, I'd suggest taking a look at Spring Integration, which allows one to do basic, ESB-like orchestration in a single JVM. It's also a great way to decouple your code from the underlying protocols.