• E-mail this page
• |  Print this page
• | 
• | 
• | 

Apache Synapse Will Pry Web Services Away From Java

Synapse, the open source project in incubation at the Apache Software Foundation, is a bid to pry Web services out of Java-oriented hands. By the time it sets them free, those restraining hands will hopefully still have plenty of life in them rather than being cold and dead.

Synapse will produce an enterprise service bus—a messaging system that can route a request off the Web to the proper Web service.

By design, Synapse makes Web services its central focus. Java is one of the means by which Web services may be built and accessed, but to Synapse, Java is one of many choices. Therefore, Java is a secondary focus.

Java backers, particularly Sun Microsystems, tend to look at the issue the other way around. The way to build Web services is with Java. The way to standardize on Web services is with Java. If you do Web services right, you need Java and not much else.

If Synapse catches on, that notion is going to be put to the test.

Synapse is language neutral, which means it will be much friendlier to PHP, Perl, Javascript and an emerging set of scripting and XML-based technologies such as XSLT or Ajax, that are neither Java nor Microsoft .Net-oriented.

Wait a minute, says Tibco spokesman Rob Meyer, who rightly points out that open source code frequently gets established with the help of large vendor backing. "Where are the major vendors backing this proposal?� he asks.

Furthermore, 14 major vendors, including IBM and Tibco, are already lined up behind Java Business Integration, also known as Java specification request 208. Synapse will compete with JSR 208.

Java Business Integration, as it emerges from the Java Community Process, will give Java developers a platform from which business logic can be given standard service-oriented characteristics. It will message a certain way, it will find services a certain way, it will request services a certain way.

This is a big step forward. Oracle, Tibco, IBM and Sun are committed to using Java Business Integration. Is Apache? asks Tibco's Meyer. "Is JSR 208 a core part of the open source effort? It needs to be," he says.

Indeed, if the overall developer community follows the Java establishment's lead, Synapse won't have much of a future. They will use Java Business Integration and develop Web services primarily in Java.

But if Web services develop along an alternative route, doing the simpler functions in simpler technologies, then for the first time Synapse will have put together "a proper Web services stack—one that's language neutral… This is the first time that the open source community has woken up to the fact that Web services are not about Java," writes the perceptive Annrai O'Toole, CEO of Cape Clear Software Inc., in his Clear Thinking blog at http://www.capeclear.com/annrai/. Cape Clear is a maker of a commercial enterprise service bus.

The open source community and Java community have been implicitly allied since the advent of Linux' commercial success. IBM, Oracle, BEA Systems and others have been quick to back both Java standards and open source, particularly Apache open source projects.

Is this implicit alliance going to be broken by the assertiveness of Synapse, which could produce code that challenges the established enterprise service buses and middleware products of the open source backers? Does Synapse need the backing of large vendors, as Meyer says?

The Apache Web server initially competed with commercial products from Microsoft, Sun and IBM and established an overwhelming market lead anyway. The MySQL database did not have the backing of major vendors before it established itself; likewise, the JBoss application server.

When it comes to the expected Synapse project, what if IBM withheld endorsement of Synapse code? Would that slow Synapse adoption? What if IBM, with its uncanny knack of showing up on the right side of Web services debates, decided to back Synapase? Would that speed adoption?

These questions can't be answered today but they are on the tongues of many who are members of both the Java and open source communities.

But when it comes to betting flat out against the Apache Software Foundation, I wouldn't do it. You're betting against a kind of gold standard in the open source field, one that's come up the hard way and organizes development talent by merit. And it looks to me like there's real talent—Apache Axis developers and Infravio Inc. X-Broker developers, for starters--coalescing behind the early Synapse project.

The emerging Synapse project will be a test of merit, not the muscle. As such, it will be a bellwether of how far open source has come or, conversely, how far it still has to go.

« It's A Good Thing This Hacker's On Our Side | Main | New Orleans Satellite Imagery: A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Reporters »