Back in December, I talked about the release of the Talend Service Factory as being the first step in the new product plans coming out of Talend. The second step occured today with the release of the Talend Integration Factory. (Click here for the official press release if you are interested.)
Talend Integration Factory is very similar to Talend Service Factory in that it builds upon one of the most successful Apache projects, in this case Apache Camel, and enhances it to meet the needs of enterprise users. For Talend Integration Factory, the major enhancements to Apache Camel are:
- OSGi container – a “container” directory is added which is a full OSGi container, including Equinox and Karaf, preconfigured with all the dependencies and bundles required for the most popular use cases of Camel in OSGi.
- Camel component for Talend Open Studio which allows jobs created from TOS to be part of a Camel route
From an enterprise standpoint, the first item is very important. Having a preconfigured, supported OSGi container setup and optimized for Camel makes it a lot easier to get started with Camel.
The second item is interesting in that it’s the first piece that really starts bridging the the Talend Data technologies with the Application Integration technologies. At this point, it’s in a very early state, but it’s a starting point to build from.
Like the Talend Service Factory release, for Talend Integration Factory we again worked very hard on creating some new documented examples that demonstrate some of the advanced features of Apache Camel. The really cool thing is that several of the examples build off of the examples from Talend Service Factory, extending them to participate in Camel routes. This is very similar to how enterprises end up using Camel. They start off with existing services or have services being developed by a particular group. Those services then need to be integrated into various EIP style routes or used from other pieces of logic. The other nice thing about building up the examples like that is it really shows how well Apache CXF and Apache Camel work together seamlessly.
Anyway, I’m definitely excited about this release. As mentioned, it’s just “Step 2″ and we have a lot of other exciting ideas and products that will be coming out this year. Stay tuned!
Posted in Apache, CXF, Talend
A month ago, it was announced that Talend had acquired Sopera. At the time, many people wondered what that really meant as Talend specialized in Data Integration and Mangement technologies and Sopera was more of an Application Integration company. Over the last couple months, I’ve defintely been involved in a lot of meetings and con calls and such to start flushing out ideas and roadmaps and such.
The first step in plan occured today with the release of Talend Service Factory. TSF is primarily a repackaged distribution of Apache CXF that is optimized more for Enterprise level use. There are two major changes from the Apache distributions:
- Java 6 optimized – Talend is only committing to supporting Java 6 so the lib directory has been optimized for Java 6, removing a bunch of things that are already provided by the JDK.
- OSGi container – a “container” directory is added which is a full OSGi container, including Equinox and Karaf, preconfigured with everything needed to use CXF in OSGi.
I’m actually quite excited about the second item for a few reasons. For one, it actually made me start looking at and using OSGi. I guess I’m a little behind the curve on that. Second, it fills a void between the lightweight services and samples that Apache CXF provides and supports and a full, heavyweight ESB like ServiceMix. We’ve had quite a few people ask about OSGi containers and such on the CXF lists. I’ve always felt a bit guilty about pointing them at something as huge and complex as ServiceMix when they don’t need it or want it. You can download the release here.
The OTHER thing that we worked hard on is a new set of documented examples that show off some of the more advanced features of CXF, ALL of them designed to be run standalone (like all the Apache CXF samples) or in the OSGi container. We all learned a lot writing the examples. We had to fix some bugs in CXF to get some of them to work in the OSGi container, but that’s part of the process. I think Sergey, Glen, and I may talk more about these examples in the upcoming days. Until then, feel free to download them and give them a run through. We have more in the works as well.
The important thing to remember is that this is just a start. Step 1. We have a lot of stuff in progress for 2011 that I’m quite excited about.
Posted in Apache, CXF, Talend
I kind of feel bad about not blogging this earlier in the week, but it’s been one of those weeks…
On Monday, Glen Mazza officially started at Talend. For those of you that are not familiar with him, Glen has been a long time commiter to Apache CXF getting started with CXF while it was still in the incubator. On CXF, he’s probably best known for reviewing the code and changes and such and fixing all the typos he found and enhancing the error messages and javadoc and such. While not a strict “feature contribution”, these types of changes have been invaluable in making CXF more pleasant to use.
However, he is a software engineer so he’s also contributed to CXF in other areas. He’s done a bit of work in the WS-Security stuff, especially in the area of creating test cases and identifying deficiencies and bugs. He’s also done quite a bit of testing with CXF and other WS-Security implementations (mostly Metro) to find interopability issues and has worked to get them resolved.
That all said, he’s probalby BEST known for the examples and walk throughs that he has done on his blog: http://www.jroller.com/gmazza/ His examples on his blog have been a great starting point for MANY CXF users as they start using CXF. When people ask for a getting starting tutorial or sample, many people point them off to his blog. His blog also tends to collect links to other interesting web pages and blogs and such related to Web Services. Definitely a great place to look for information.
Anyway, I just wanted to say “Welcome Aboard!” to Glen and I definitely look forward to working with him to make CXF better and make Talends products better.
Posted in Apache, CXF, Talend
