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MOM and SOA on Linux?

Posted by Cliff on from the three-lettered-acronyms-as-buzzwords dept.

dogmeant asks: "I have yet to see MOM (message oriented middleware) offerings on Linux much less open source projects that address the same. And while we're at it, what about tools that address SOA/BPM (Service oriented architecture/business process modeling) type architectures on Linux? Is the Open Source community ready to take on challenges like this?" If anyone else out there has this particular itch, maybe this will be another niche in which Open Source software can catch some Enterprise mindshare.

3 of 48 comments (clear)

  1. IBM has middleware on Linux by Vendekkai · · Score: 4, Informative

    The IBM middleware family, formerly known as MQSeries, now called IBM WebSphere MQ family, has ports for Linux. More info on the IBM site

    Vinci is a SOA for Linux. The site describes it as "a local area service-oriented architecture designed for rapid development and management of robust web applications"

    I have attended presentations on MQ series, and found it interesting, but never had any opportunity to use it. I found the Vinci paper by googling.

  2. Jabber, XMLBlaster and friends by Twylite · · Score: 4, Informative

    Jabber is normally thought of as yet another IM system, but "Jabber is an open XML protocol for the real-time exchange of messages and presence between any two points on the Internet" (from the Jabber site). Its first application has been IM, but it is by no means limited to IM. Jabber is a protocol specification, and there are several open and closed source implementations of clients and servers.

    xmlBlaster is a more traditional MOM offering, under LGPL. It supports numerous protocols and bindings into a number of languages.

    As usual, Google offers a lot of advice on the topic of 'mom middleware "open source"', including a list of MOM implementations which tells us that JORAM is also open source, and an article entitle Open Source in Middleware.

    --
    i-name =twylite [http://public.xdi.org/=twylite], see idcommons.net
  3. It goes deeper than that. by FreeLinux · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is a common situation in open source and I don't see it changing anytime soon. The fact is that apps such as middleware are business apps. They aren't terribly sexy or cool. They are however, important to business and are usually specific to a particular business.

    On the other hand, it seems that most open source developers are motivated to scratch their own itch. They are drawn to apps that are cool and apps that meet their needs. This is perfectly understandable but, it does result in a derth of open source business apps that are either mundane or just plain boaring. For this reason, open source offers an emormous assortment of "toy" apps. There are countless cd burners/rippers, MP3/Ogg players/encoders, Linux utilities and so forth. There are also a ridiculous amount of frameworks and libraries, usually all repeating the same theme. If I see another "yet another framework" project I'm going to be sick.

    There are only a few business type open source projects and even fewer ones that could be considered mature enough and good enough to run your business on them. If a business wants a particular app they must build it themselves. This of course costs money and in some cases it costs a huge amount of money. And there in lies the problem. Most businesses that have spent large amounts of money on development are not interested or willing to give it away by making their project open source. For these two reasons there are very few business type open source apps like middleware and it will be a long time before there are, if ever.