RE: [alf-dev] No Reasons for Agila "Primary Choice"

["Tim Buss" <TBuss@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Thank you for posting this analysis.  It is very useful.  I agree with your evaluation.

 

Just to be clear, Agila was formerly our preferred choice before we had investigated it fully.  However it quickly became clear that is incomplete is some important ways.  It may be our primary choice in the futured depending how it develops.  Currently the BPEL part (Twister) is being merged with Agila to become a full apache project so it may be a while before it settle in and work in the BPEL part results.  We looked at a number of Open Source engines and only ActiveBPEL seemed to be mature enough for our immediate needs.  Consequently, ActiveBPEL was chosen as the target for the POC.  I believe this was discussed on the newsgroup or in the mail list but I apologies if that was not made clear in an obvious way.

 

PXE is on the list as an example implementation in the future. We have started to look at it internally but it will not be the target for the ALF POC.  I recommend staying with ActiveBPEL for ALF related work for the time being.

 

That all said, it is a goal of ALF to be BPEL engine agnostic as far as is practical.  This is not the focus of the POC and thus any current ALF work but it will be useful, going forward,  to understand the various engines out there.

 

Tim Buss

---

From: alf-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:alf-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Hawkins, Joel
Sent: Tuesday, October 11, 2005 12:50 PM
To: 'ALF Developer Mailing List'
Subject: RE: [alf-dev] No Reasons for Agila "Primary Choice"

+1

-----Original Message-----
From: alf-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:alf-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of rupert.thurner@xxxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, October 11, 2005 3:19 PM
To: alf-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [alf-dev] No Reasons for Agila "Primary Choice"

hi robert,

 

maybe you want to look into http://servicemix.org/. it should be much closer to what you want to do. it uses opensource pxe.

 

best regards,

 

rupert thurner

workflow@ubs

 

---

From: alf-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:alf-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Robert Brady
Sent: Dienstag, 11. Oktober 2005 20:39
To: alf-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [alf-dev] No Reasons for Agila "Primary Choice"

According to the ALF 2005 Eclipse Word presentation, "Apache Agila (aka Twister) is the current primary choice for the orchestration engine".  

 

I installed and tried both Agila and ActiveBPEL.  I would not want to use Agila in the POC.  I can't justify Agila as being a primary choice for the POC.  My comparison of the two is given below. 

 

Can anyone give a few good reasons for using Agila over ActiveBPEL?

 

I tried both the Apache Agila BPEL engine as well as that of ActiveBPEL.  I found ActiveBPEL to be much easier to install and target for deploy, with a far larger community. 

 

 

Installation Requirements:

=======================

 

Agila

 

* Servlet containter (e.g., Tomcat 5)

* Relational Database (e.g, MySQL, Oracle; HSQL-DB provided)

* XML Database (Apache XIndice provided)

* Subversion Client

* Apache Maven

* XDoclet 1.2.x (has plugin required for Maven)

* Apache Ant

 

ActiveBpel

 

* Servlet containter (e.g., Tomcat 5)

 

 

Deploy Procedure

========================

 

Agila

 

* Done through web interface (not fully tested to verify). During the course of my testing with Agilia's error-riddled samples, I managed to corrupt the Agila engine's relational database and could not verify its web deploy page.

 

ActiveBPEL

 

* Done by copying ActiveBPEL custmom jar.  Requires tedious creation of ActiveBPEL "process deployment description" file.

A forum user has contributed java code to automatically generate this pdd file given the BPEL and WSDL inputs. (not tested to verify)

 

Community

==========

 

Agila

 

Sparsely contributed to gzipped mail archive (e.g., 2 posts for all of September 2005).

 

ActiveBPEL

 

Five forums actively monitored by admins who provide explanations, fix suggestions.  Over 2,500 posts from about 400 registered users.

 

Docs/Samples

============

 

Agila

 

A wiki site w/three web page guides for Install, Users, Development.  Three error-riddled samples, missing message definitions, etc.

 

 

ActiveBPEL

 

Several guides for installation, usage, deployment, architecture.  Six complete samples including client source code and ant build, deploy, and test scripts.  Five of the samples verified to work with one not building (custom_xpath_function) due to using old ActiveBPEL version API.

 

 

Odds & Ends

============

 

I'm not sure how they compare against administrative/event APIs available through web services or event/exception handling.  I do know ActiveBPEL supports the former and is fully implements BPEL4WS1.1.  

 

The contents of this e-mail are intended for the named addressee only. It contains information that may be confidential. Unless you are the named addressee or an authorized designee, you may not copy or use it, or disclose it to anyone else. If you received it in error please notify us immediately and then destroy it.

**********************************************************************
This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and
intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they
are addressed. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all copies of the original message.