WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus for z/OS, Version 6.2.0 Operating Systems: z/OS


WebSphere ESB and the enterprise service bus

WebSphere® ESB provides the capabilities of a standards-based enterprise service bus.

WebSphere ESB manages the flow of messages between service requesters and service providers. Mediation modules within the ESB handle mismatches between requesters and providers, including protocol or interaction-style, interface and quality of service mismatches. In an SCA-based solution mediation modules are a type of SCA module. The mediation modules perform a special role, and therefore have slightly different characteristics from other components that operate at the business level.

Mediation components operate on messages exchanged between service endpoints. In contrast with regular business application components, they are concerned with the flow of the messages through the infrastructure and not just with the business content of the messages. Rather than performing business functions, they perform routing, transformation, and logging operations on the messages. The information that governs their behavior is often held in headers flowing with the business messages. The IBM® SOA programming model introduces the service message object (SMO) data structure to support this pattern.

WebSphere ESB supports advanced interactions between service endpoints on three levels: broad connectivity, a spectrum of interaction models and qualities of interaction, and mediation capabilities. The product supports connectivity between endpoints through a variety of protocols and application programming interfaces (APIs):

Because it is built on WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere ESB can provide smooth interoperability with other products in the WebSphere portfolio, including IBM WebSphere MQ and IBM WebSphere Message Broker. It can also, with IBM WebSphere Adapters solutions, use existing application assets, as well as capture and disseminate business events.

The message clients for C/C++ and Microsoft® .NET enable non-Java applications to connect to WebSphere ESB using an API similar to the JMS API.

Other features at the connectivity level perform basic protocol conversion between endpoints where the protocol used by the requester to dispatch requests (such as SOAP over HTTP) is different from that of the service provider that is to handle those requests (such as SOAP over JMS).


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Timestamp icon Last updated: 21 June 2010


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