Hello,
Experience sharing:
Off late I spent quite sometime with Docker technology to understand it and implement integration use cases using webMethods suite. Using installation script I installed the whole suite and created a docker image (Using Free Trial Version).
It proved to be a very challenging yet learning exercise. Now I could simply spin a new container to have a new instance available, play around and kill it after use.
Going further, came across several fancy terms in Microservices {Separation of concerns, Stateless Independent scalable services, Loosely coupled architecture etc…}.
What intrigued me:
In my experience in integration layer / ESB we usually create interfaces to integrate systems to transfer data using standard design patterns (Publish-Subscribe/Web Services/JMS/File Based/Adapters/Batch etc…).
e.g. Integrating CRM with SAP for customer data sync, integrating partners to exchange business messages (EDI/RN/etc…)
Now, how making webMethods available on Docker will help in achieving Microservices kind of architecture? When we don’t have any business logic implemented in middle layer.
Except that the provisioning/installation of servers becomes easier as it is a repeatable job, spinning new containers from an image.
Challanges:
However, the image size for webMethods itself run into GBs (> 2GB). Managing such a huge size of image in cloud (AWS/webMethods Integration Cloud/etc…) is a resource intensive, time consuming job.
On top of it licensing part limits the number of instances one can spin.
If someone has done any implementation of webMethods on Docker (Public cloud AWS-ECS/Private Cloud - Self manged Swarms) please share your experience and challenges.
Looking forward to have some thoughts on it.
Regards,
Manoj
