Advanced Concepts in WS-BPEL 2.0

Waruna and I’ll be doing a post-conference tutorial session on “Advanced Concepts in WS-BPEL” in WSO2 Con 2011.
Summary of the session is as follows.

BPEL is the de-facto standard for modeling executable Web services orchestrations. It is an XML-based language used for the definition and execution of business, as well as scientific work flows using Web services. WSO2 Business Process Server (WSO2 BPS) and Apache Orchestration Director Engine(ODE) are two WS-BPEL compliant business process executable work-flow engines, which support composition of Web services by orchestrating service interactions.
In this tutorial, Warauna and I will elaborate on some advanced concepts in WS-BPEL 2.0 and extensibility in WSO2 BPS like

• fault handling
• compensation handling
• event processing   
• selective event processing
• multiple event processing
• concurrent event processing
• message correlation
• parallel processing
• Introduction to ODE extensions
• Future improvements with extensions

Introducing New Sample Guide for BPS 2.1.0

From WSO2 BPS 2.1.0 onwards, we have introduced a new sample guide and documentation which explain some of the basic concepts involved in WS-BPEL 2.0. You can find the documentation over here .

Also we have introduced few samples for complex BPEL scenarios like

• Compensation handlers - SampleCompensationHandlers
  
  • This samples demonstrates a flight reservation process with the functionality of with a basic compensation handler will work. Also it involves the which are required in compensation handling.
• Event-handlers - SampleEventHandlers
  
  • This sample has an event-handler implementation is capable verifying the functionality and reliability of construct.
• Asynchronous processes SampleAsynchronousProcess
  
  • This sample contains two processes. One acts as a client (Async-Client.zip) for the server (Async-Server.zip). Message correlation is used to maintain the asynchronous interaction between client and server.
   

 We will add the documentation to explain those scenarios as well. You can find those other samples over here.

SSL enabled JConsole to monitor a WSO2 Carbon Server Securely

WSO2 Products like WSO2 AS, ESB, BPS etc. are MBeans enabled servers such that they can be monitored via JMX clients. JConsole is a graphical JMX monitoring client which comes as a part of JDK.
Recently I had to securely monitor a remote WSO2 carbon server.
But the problem is, now any remote user can implement a MBean on the target server and use System.exit() from the client end to kill the Carbon server. So we need to harden  (or secure and restrict) the communication between client and server.
So I used jConsole via a SSL tunnel which enforces client authentication and RMI-registry authentication. Here’re the steps I took to solve the problem.
Note - Feel free to shout back in case you need more clarifications. In some steps I assumed the audience is aware of JMX, public key cryptography etc.

Content

• Applied for
• Enable remote JMX monitoring for Carbon
• Enforcing SSL
• Enforcing SSL client authentication
• Enforcing RMI-registry authentication

Join us at WSO2Con-2011

WSO2Con 2010 was started last year as a part of WSO2’s 5th year anniversary. This year, WSO2Con 2011 is to be held from Sept 12-16, Waters Edge, Colombo, Sri Lanka. This year’s agenda includes more than 30 speakers from 10 countries.

Keynote Speakers are

IBM Global Technology Outlook – 2011 Dr. C Mohan Fellow, IBM Research

Service Orientation – Why is it good for your business Sastry Malladi Distinguished Architect, eBay

Enterprise Integration Patterns: Past, Present and Future Gregor Hohpe Google

SOA & Beyond using open source technologies Narendra Nethmal Chief Architect, Cognizant Technologies

WSO2: Disrupting the middleware industry Dr. Sanjiva Weerawarana Chairman, Founder & CEO, WSO2 Inc.

WSO2 Vision and Roadmap Paul Fremantle Founder & CTO WSO2 Inc.

In a summary the conference will be all about

• Customer experiences describing how WSO2 products are being used to build enterprise and SaaS apps in financial services, government, mobile, telecom and other industries.
• Best practices for leading enterprise architecture initiatives, managing SOA projects and moving beyond SOA and open source.
• Tutorials on a broad range of middleware technologies by WSO2 developers and Apache committers with real world experience working with customers around the world.

Find the full agenda here http://wso2.com/events/wso2con-2011-colombo/agenda/
Registration link - http://wso2.com/events/wso2con-2011-colombo/

Happy 6th birthday WSO2!

This month, August is the summer vacation period for WSO2. Also last August 4th was WSO2’s 6th birthday. A small party was organized in both US and LK offices on the birthday. On the same day, a day-out was organized for school kids who were from Sigiriya area. They were brought to visit WSO2 and few places in Colombo like Zoo, World Trade Center, Museum and Galle Face Green etc. Here are some snapshots that I really liked of the day. Thanks, Chinthana Wilamuna and Harindu Alwis for sharing them. Happy birthday WSO2!

WSO2 BPS 2.1.0 Available for Download

The WSO2 Business Process Server(BPS) team is pleased to announce the release of 2.1.0 version of the Open Source Business Process server. WSO2 BPS 2.1.0 is based on WSO2 Carbon 3.2.0 which is the OSGi-based component framework allows the complete set of WSO2 products to leverage shared components, ensuring a consistent set of features between products, a consistent user experience, and reusing of identical components. You can find the release note for WSO2 BPS 2.1.0 from here.

Two fresh products; WSO2 MB and WSO2 CEP also were released with the existing set of products.

Few excerpts from the WSO2 BPS 2.1.0 release note...

• WSO2 Business Process Server (BPS) is an easy-to-use Open Source Business Process Server that executes business processes written following WS-BPEL standard. WS-BPEL is emerging as the defacto standard for composing multiple synchronous and asynchronous web services into collaborative and transactional process flows which increase the flexibility and agility of your Service Oriented Architecture. WSO2 BPS is powered by Apache ODE and available under Apache Software License v2.0. WSO2 BPS provides a complete Web based graphical console to deploy, manage and monitor business process and process instances.
  
• WSO2 BPS is developed on top of the revolutionary Carbon platform (Middleware a' la carte), and is based on the OSGi framework to achieve the better modularity for you SOA. Carbon platform contains lots of new features and many other optional components that can be used to customize or enhance the functionalities provided by BPS to suits you SOA needs. In addition to installing optional components you can uninstall unwanted features without any trouble.
  WSO2 team recently released 3.2.0 version of WSO2 Carbon platform which is the OSGi-based component framework allows the complete set of products to leverage shared components, ensuring a consistent set of features between products, a consistent user experience, and reusing of identical components.
  
• An open source product, WSO2 BPS is available under the Apache Software License (v2.0) . This includes all of the extra integration and management functionality as well.

Off-season Sri Padha(Adam's peak) hike

Recently five friends at WSO2 and I hiked-up Sri Padha(Adam's Peak) during the off-season. It was my 2nd hike to that mountain during the off-season. During the off-season the site was very much peaceful as usually pilgrims don't walk up the mountain due to heavy raining, strong wind, lightning and thick mist.
Adam's peak is an important pilgrimage site especially for Buddhists. Unlike in pilgrimage season (December to May), we had to take precautions and we had to prepare and bring all the food and stuff required up to the peak of the mountain. As there's no electricity until the peak of the mountain, we prepared for that as well. We climbed-up the mountain via a shorter path which is Hatton route and climbed-down via a longer path which is Rathnapura route. We started to climb-up the mountain around 2pm and it took around four hours. While climbing-up, it was raining all most all the time, but we didn't experience much of a wind. We were the only team to stay there for that night. And the next morning we worshiped and walked around the peak. We couldn't see the sun-rise due to thick mist. Only for few seconds we saw very far away mountains but those views were vanished in seconds when thick clouds covered the peak. Then we climbed-down via Rathnapura route and we experienced some strong wind. Though Rathnapura route was quite longer it was more beautiful as it was lead through a lush green jungle.

At the peak