Exploring Fabricaware Features of Developer 61 Feature Pack 1

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Abstract

In July 2004, webMethods released Feature Packs for Integration Server and Developer as well as a new version of Fabric that allow the user to perform the following functions from within Developer:

  1. Register Flow and Java Services as web services accessible to Fabric nodes []Browse services available in the Fabric from within Developer []Create web services connectors that bind to Fabric Services

This article will take a look at each of these features and then use the example services shipped with Fabric to demonstrate creation of a web services connector that invokes a web service and fails over automatically to an equivalent service with the original one is no longer available.

PDF version of article
ExploringFabric-AwareFeaturesOfWebMethodsDeveloper6.1FeaturePack1.pdf (177.7 k)

		Mark
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Mark - thanks for the article - and for the glimpse into what’s coming from WM.

I get the impression that FABRIC is like the master node in a grid that delegates the request to the appropriate server in the grid. Would this be correct?

I can see the value in FABRIC - not sure why WM would need to gobble up the MIND ELECTRIC to deliver this product? Is it strictly a way of acquiring their existing clients or is their some technical reasons for the acquisition?

I also struggle with the company’s thinking around GLUE. It certainly focuses on the WS market, but does not seem to tie in with the WM platform. In some sense - it would seem to compete with it?

Any and all thoughts appreciated.

Thanks
Haithem

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Fabric nodes provide infrastructure services in a peer-to-peer fashion that might traditionally have been provided by a server. Different nodes in the fabric are designated as the “lead nodes” for a particular service (for example the endpoint manager).

Fabric nodes can also publish custom logic as web services. Fabric allows these services to be discovered by replicating information about them (name, description, endpoint address, WSDL URL, interface and messages signatures, etc.) throughout the fabric using a distributed XML database.

Fabric can deliver failover and load balancing services for web services that have the same interface and message signatures regardless of where they are running or what language was used to implement a service’s business logic.

As to the reasoning behind the acquisitions, I think it is pretty simple: TME had two leading edge products, a top-notch development team and a visionary leader. Oh, by the way, they also had a revenue stream and a large number of satisfied customers. I do not think that the motivation was to acquire the customer base.

As of their latest releases, webMethods products that supported web services (IS, Developer, Modeler and Portal to name a few) used a variety of soap stacks. Portal uses Apache Axis today. IS uses a custom soap processing approach. Glue provides a superior, simple-to-use, standards compliant, time-tested, highly interoperable, widely accepted in the market set of soap and xml functionality.

My guess as an outsider is that you’ll see all of the WM products that need to provide web services support incorporate Glue as their soap stack and deliver the option to leverage Fabric’s state-of-the-market Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) abilities.

Glue was aimed at a company’s initial proof-of-concept and departmental web services efforts. I used it for that exact thing nearly 3 years ago. When a company’s portfolio of web services goes from a half-dozen to hundreds or thousands of services, a different set of problems arise. Fabric (which relies on Glue) is aimed squarely at addressing that space.

Mark

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I have installed Developer FP1. I can browse the services in fabric, but seem to have issues in pubishing from the Developer to the Fabric.

wM seems to complain that I am running on an integration server that is not capable of binding flows in to webservices in Fabric.

Have you seen anything like this and have a possible solution?

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I think you also need to install a feature pack for the Integration Server to make it work.