OpenESB

OpenESB is a Java-based open source enterprise service bus. It can be used as a platform for both enterprise application integration and service-oriented architecture. OpenESB allows you to integrate legacy systems, external and internal partners and new development in your Business Process. OpenESB is the unique open-source ESB relying on standard JBI (Java Business Integration), XML, XML Schema, WSDL, BPEL and Composite application that provides you with simplicity, efficiency, long-term durability, and savings on your present and future investments with a very low TCO (Total Cost of Ownership).

It used to be owned by Sun Microsystems, but after Oracle and Sun Microsystems merged (see: Sun acquisition by Oracle), the OpenESB Community was created to maintain, improve, promote and support OpenESB.

OpenESB consists of 5 parts: the framework, the container, the components,the Integrated Development Environment and the development plugins.

OpenESB main parts

JBI high level schema

The framework consists of a lightweight JBI implementation in Java. This implementation is container-agnostic and can work on any platform and any container. Even if development and support are mainly focused on Glassfish V2 and V3 platforms, beta projects on JBoss and standalone JVM work well and are in progress (2012 Q2). In addition to the OpenESB framework being lightweight, it is also reliable and highly scalable. It is embedded in a Java virtual machine and communicates with other framework instances through Binding components. This architecture matches perfectly with new cloud architectures and allows easy deployment and management on very complex infrastructures. The framework is fully manageable with any JMX-based tool such as Jconsole or more sophisticated tools like Opsview or Nagios.