Bostech Corporation Concentrates on Usability for ChainBuilder ESB's General Availability

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Tuesday, February 6, 2007; 02:40 AM

- Bostech Corporation today announced the general availability of ChainBuilder ESB, a new Enterprise Service Bus centered on open standards and development through Eclipse-based graphical user interfaces.

Bostech released the alpha version of ChainBuilder ESB into open source 90 days ago to encourage developers and application vendors to begin leveraging ChainBuilder ESB in their solutions. Averaging more than 100 visitors a day and after thousands of downloads of the alpha and beta version, the growing ChainBuilder ESB community is primed for today's General Availability release.

"A unique aspect of our open source solution is a focus on usability," says David Bourke, President of Bostech Corporation. "Used primarily for enterprise-level business operations, ChainBuilder ESB supports a superior SOA development and monitoring environment as compared to other open source ESB products. Our development team realized there are many levels of SOA developers, and we are catering to the busiest of them -- those who understand the advantages of standards-based technology like JBI, but do not have time to learn the ins-and-outs of every new specification."    

The core of the ChainBuilder ESB development environment includes several Eclipse-based plug-ins. These IDE graphical interfaces are used to configure ESB components through wizards and drag and drop functionality. The typical ChainBuilder ESB candidates are IT developers assembling an SOA environment on a tight timeframe. As common among corporations, IT developers are faced with establishing an SOA solution with some Web Services and also the integration of disparate existing business applications -- a perfect scenario for ChainBuilder ESB.

IT developers can use ChainBuilder ESB's Component Flow Editor to graphically layout the flow of SOA components within an Eclipse IDE interface. Disparate business applications can also be brought into the XML-based SOA fold through a set of ChainBuilder ESB's service engines that transform the message formats of critical business applications, such as X12 EDI format, into XML. All components (new structures and non-XML integrations) are shown in the Component Flow Editor.

Eric Lu, CTO, Bostech Corporation comments, "Best of all, the ChainBuilder ESB Component Flow Editor hides the complexities of the JBI specifications and allows developers to code to the JBI standard without becoming an expert in the mundane details of the specification."

ChainBuilder ESB also provides an AJAX-based web interface for monitoring and controlling the ESB in a production environment. A monitoring solution is an uncommon extra in open source code, but a necessity for a production SOA infrastructure. The ChainBuilder ESB Console is a web interface for the administration and management of your ESB environment, such as deploying an application, as well as the review of statistics and runtime logs.

ChainBuilder ESB enables organizations to:

-   Define standards-based components easily though drag and drop graphical user interface. For developers tasked with implementing standards-based components, ChainBuilder ESB provides graphical user interfaces that configure Java Business Integration (JBI) compliant components via drag and drop functionality.

-   Plug disparate software systems into a strategic ESB/SOA infrastructure. Leverage your investment in mature technologies, while staying up to date with the latest IT technologies. ChainBuilder ESB provides format editors enabling the point-and-click mapping of non-XML message formats, like fixed, variable and X12 EDI formats. ChainBuilder ESB also provides binding components to handle traditional communication protocols, like file and FTP.

-   Step back and design considering the overall application flow. Layout your Service Oriented Architecture in the ChainBuilder ESB Component Flow Editor and view all integration components by means of a high-level graphical orientation. Designers can define and connect new components and disparate systems, then drill down to define specifics.

-   Monitor and Control Run-time Components through AJAX-based Web Interface. Manage your Enterprise Service Bus through the ChainBuilder ESB Console web interface by performing remote administration, monitoring and control on run-time JBI components and other ChainBuilder ESB server modules. The web interface provides access to perform management tasks, like install components, deploy applications and view server runtime log files.

"As an extremely high-quality open source application, ChainBuilder ESB gives organizations the control and flexibility needed to fulfill integration challenges using open standards," says Andrew Friedman, VP Business Development, "I've been particularly impressed with the quality of the ChainBuilder ESB user interfaces and am proud to bring this solution to partners and commercial enterprises worldwide."

Bostech Corporation deploys a dual-license distribution model for the ChainBuilder ESB. Developers can download the open source software under the common GPL license from the ChainBuilder ESB Community site at http://download.chainforge.net.

Additionally, open source developers can purchase a Professional Subscription that provides ChainBuilder ESB training, support, warranty and intellectual property indemnification. A commercial license is available for use where GPL is not available and for partners who do not release source code for their applications.

ChainBuilder ESB supports both Windows and Linux operating systems. For a complete list of product functionality in ChainBuilder ESB's General Availability release, visit http://www.chainforge.net/chainbuilder.

ABOUT BOSTECH CORPORATION
Bostech Corporation consists of a team of pioneers in the business integration software market place. Bostech's ChainBuilder is a prominent cross-industry integration tool used by organizations ranging from e-commerce retailers like Amazon.com to energy producers like Aventine Renewable Energy. Bostech helps these businesses seamlessly share, exchange, and transact critical information with their customers, suppliers, partners, and employees. Headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, with company operations in Columbus, Ohio, and Beijing, China, Bostech Corporation was founded by Brad Bostic and is privately owned. For more information, visit http://www.bostechcorp.com.