GlassFish ESB v2.1 has just been released. The new release features improved scaling through clustering, AIX 5.3 support, the new Intelligent Event Processor (IEP) Service Engine, and the new Scheduler Binding Component (BC).

I looked at the release notes to get a more detailed view of what's new and improved. Robustness and platform support stand out to me, along with the two highlighted new components.

The Intelligent Event Processor Service Engine "enables complex event processing (CEP) and event stream processing (ESP) using the Continuous Query Language (CQL)." A quick search of the GlassFish ESB documentation didn't turn up details about this, but a web search brought me to the OpenESB IEP page, which says:

IEP engine can send and receive events from all the external systems that Open ESB supports. The events from the Open ESB external systems can generate a cloud of events as well as streams of events. The IEP engine can analyze both these types of events. IEP uses Continuous Query Language (CQL) and a rich set of operators to analyze the events.

The page also includes an engine architecture diagram and overview, and points us to the IEP Wiki and the IEP User's Guide.

The new Scheduler Binding Component:

provides scheduling capabilities for initiating JBI services. The binding component is powered by http://www.opensymphony.com/quartz/, and allows you to schedule triggers to launch (consume) other JBI components, such as the File Binding Component. You can set these actions or processes to occur at specific times or break up activities to fit any schedule.

You can apply a simple trigger (time-interval), a cron trigger (like the Unix cron program), or a hybrid trigger (a cron that controls a simple trigger).

If you've developed software that requires guaranteed high availability on multiple platforms, you understand the significance when a large application adds support of new systems. GlassFish ESB 2.1 adds full operating system support of OpenSolaris 2008.11 and Red Hat Linux AS 5 (32 and 64 bit), and runtime support of IBM AIX 5L 5.3 (64-bit OS, 32-bit JVM). In addition, NetBeans IDE 6.5 and GlassFish Enterprise Server 2.1 are also now supported.

To see how this fits in with the broader picture of GlassFish OpenESB support, take a look at GlassFish ESB Supported Operating Systems and External Systems. There you'll see that GlassFish ESB supports multiple versions of Solaris and OpenSolaris, Microsoft Windows, Red Hat, and Mac. That's quite a list. I know from experience that supporting that range of platforms for an enterprise level application is no small feat.

The other big addition provided by Version 2.1 is support for GlassFish clustering in all components. This is a critical enhancement, because if a few components cannot be properly scaled, then those components can become bottlenecks blocking true scalability for the entire application. It's of no use to add new servers if processing is blocked by an unscalable, or insufficiently scalable, component that is widely used in your particular operating environment. This is no longer a problem in GlassFish ESB 2.1.

See the Release Notes for the other new and improved items, and visit the OpenESB home page for additional OpenESB-specific information.