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New Members Join JAVA Business Integration Specification Effort

Sun Microsystems Inc, the creator and leading advocate of Java technology, joined with Java technology leaders to announce the availability of the Early Draft Review of the Java Business Integration (JBI) specification, Java Specification Request (JSR) 208. The group also announced that Apache Group, IONA and JBoss have joined the effort dedicated to developing an open standard for business integration on the Java platform. The specification extends the Java platform to incorporate standardized integration capabilities, and marks an important milestone in enabling Java technology use based on service-oriented architecture (SOA).

The JSR 208 project, which is chaired by Sun, is being jointly developed through the Java Community Process (JCP ) program by over 22 prominent vendors, and individual developers of Integration and Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) technology, including Novell, Oracle, SAP AG, SeeBeyond, Sonic Software, Sybase Inc, TIBCO Software and webMethods Inc. Apache, JBoss and IONA announced they have joined the JSR 208 Expert group.

"The goal of the Java Business Integration initiative is to do for the integration space what J2EE did for the field of Java application development and deployment; namely, deliver the benefits of choice, flexibility, interoperability, code reuse, reduced complexity and lower cost", said Mark Bauhaus, vice president of Java and Web services at Sun. "The Early Draft Review of JSR 208 shows our commitment to develop this technology in an open and standards-based way through the Java Community Process."

Implementations based on JBI will help to provide IT organizations with higher levels of portability and reuse of integration technologies not achievable with many of today's integration products. Java Business Integration components such as business process engines based on the BPEL specification, rules engines, and routing and transformation engines from multiple vendors can be easily combined into a single solution, reducing the cost of application integration and enabling best-of-breed solutions.

Java Business Integration Paves The Way For SOA

The Early Draft of the JSR 208 specification is available today at www.jcp.org for industry comment. It defines a unified, pluggable architecture for building integration technology on the Java platform and specifies standard interfaces for integration components like BPEL engines, transformation engines, or routing engines, to be plugged seamlessly into an integration container. JBI gives customers the ability to assemble a best-of-breed solution, or to extend their integration solutions by adding new integration components. The high level of flexibility, choice, and extensibility in JBI will lead to more robust integration solutions with reduced vendor lock-in, and lower costs. Additionally, by building upon Java standards, JSR 208 allows developers to leverage their Java and J2EE development skills, to reduce the time and effort required to solve complex integration problems.

Additionally, JSR 208 defines a shared service oriented architecture messaging facility that is the foundation for standards-based SOA. Customers are increasingly demanding an infrastructure that allows them to build composite SOA applications from reusable services. A SOA infrastructure layer, commonly referred to as an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), is key to enabling such reusable services. By combining pluggable SOA Integration components with a SOA infrastructure layer, JSR 208 provides the essential building block for implementing a standards-based ESB. It also paves the path for Java middleware vendors to leverage emerging technologies such as BPEL in their ESB offerings using consistent, standard interfaces.

"The Java Business Integration JSR is very important for standardizing integration technology on the Java platform," said James Strachan, Apache's representative on the Expert Group.

"Oracle continues to drive the direction of Web services and business integration through active involvement in industry standards in leadership positions and as working group participants in organizations such as the JCP, W3C, OASIS, WS-I, OAGI, and RosettaNet," said Don Deutsch, vice president of Standards Strategy and Architecture for Oracle Corp. "Oracle remains committed to offering its customers interoperability based on open industry standards and continues to work closely with other vendors toward that end in initiatives such as JSR 208, Java Business Integration."

"SAP participates in the development of JSR 208 in order to lead the industry toward advanced integration capabilities for business-critical applications based on the J2EE platform. SAP NetWeaver leverages the innovative use of J2EE standards to provide developers with an enterprise services platform for building integration solutions, using BPM and workflow automation to support process agility," said Michael Bechauf, vice president of SAP NetWeaver Standards and JCP Executive Committee member. "SAP NetWeaver will continue to provide open and adaptable frameworks at a lower cost as companies make the transition to Enterprise Services Architectures, SAP's blueprint for Services Oriented Architectures."

About Sun Microsystems Inc

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision -- "The Network Is The Computer" -- has propelled Sun Microsystems Inc to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that make the Net work. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the World Wide Web at sun.com/.