Redhat JBOSS ENTERPRISE MIDDLEWARE User Manual
PUTTING OPEN SOURCE TO THE TEST:
THE MAKING OF JBOSS ENTERPRISE MIDDLEWARE
Through a rigorous productization process, JBoss Enterprise Middleware teams continually
harden and transform cutting-edge open source technology into well-tempered enterprise
software products with unsurpassed quality, performance, and stability — then deliver it with
top-notch support and mission-critical SLAs. Here’s how it’s done.
June 2008
www.jboss.com
Putting open source to the test: The making of JBoss Enterprise Middleware
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT Page 3
ENTERPRISE IT MEETS OPEN SOURCE:
BENEFITS AND CHALLENGES Page 4
CREATING JBOSS ENTERPRISE MIDDLEWARE Page 6
Open source for the enterprise Page 6
Hardening open source software
into middleware products Page 7
Dening products and identifying
software sources Page 7
Branching code and assembling components Page 8
Dening product release strategy Page 9
Testing function and quality Page 9
Certifying platform and database compatibility Page 10
Validating stack compatibility Page 11
Meeting requirements for performance,
scalability, and resilience Page 11
Security analysis, testing, and monitoring Page 11
Platform certication: Behind the scenes Page 12
Providing enterprise-quality support and service Page 12
Legal assurance Page 13
Professional documentation and training Page 13
Leveraging a reference implementation Page 13
Software localization Page 14
Previews of coming attractions Page 14
JBoss Enterprise Middleware:
Delivering the best of both worlds Page 14
About JBoss Enterprise Middleware Page 16
About Red Hat Page 16
Putting open source to the test: The making of JBoss Enterprise Middleware
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ABSTRACT
For enterprise IT organizations and independent software vendors (ISVs), open source software eliminates
high up-front license fees, provides transparent access to code, and delivers high-quality capabilities honed
by many intelligent minds focusing on a problem. But wholehearted adoption of an open source approach
also brings diverse challenges, including highly granular components with disparate versions that must be
integrated and tested, variable component stability, uncertain platform and database compatibility, and unknown performance characteristics. Documentation and support may or may not be available to save time
for busy developers. While IT managers expect to perform some testing and validation of any new software
they adopt, it can be hard to predict the time and effort needed, especially in a complex environment that
incorporates multiple platforms and systems. A multitude of open source components — with a multitude of
usage agreements — also brings management headaches and legal risks.
JBoss Enterprise Middleware helps companies overcome these and many other challenges by providing the
best of both worlds — software developed by a vibrant open source community, with the testing, certication, documentation, training, and support traditionally found only with mature commercial software products. This whitepaper describes how a collection of technology developed by open source projects becomes
a set of JBoss Enterprise Middleware products. This productization process — incorporating careful requirements analysis and selection, a stable code branch, a formidable battery of tests, and full documentation — continually delivers products that are hardened, polished and enterprise-ready — stable, scalable, and
fully supported. As a result, enterprise IT organizations experience lower middleware TCO and risk, while
developers can devote more time to business application challenges.
This paper is intended primarily for senior IT managers responsible for enterprise architecture, application
development, and application operations. Managers evaluating middleware solutions will gain a deeper understanding of how JBoss Enterprise Middleware products are developed and why they offer an ideal platform for the development and deployment of mission critical applications and services.
Note: This paper does not provide an overview of the capabilities of JBoss Enterprise Middleware products.
If you are new to the products, you may wish to begin with the JBoss Enterprise Middleware data sheet or
individual product data sheets available from www.jboss.com.
Putting open source to the test: The making of JBoss Enterprise Middleware
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ENTERPRISE IT MEETS OPEN SOURCE:
BENEFITS AND CHALLENGES
Open source middleware has been a major boon to IT organizations that want to reduce risk and TCO for
their application infrastructures. Today many open source software components power mission-critical
applications, including the Linux operating system, Apache Web Server, and JBoss Enterprise Middleware.
Open source software offers many advantages, including:
Transparent access to code.• With the ability to see how code works, a company’s IT staff knows ex-
actly how a vendor has implemented features and industry standards, and has the information needed
to address any integration issues quickly and easily. In addition, IT managers can avoid locking their
companies into specic vendors or products over the long term.
Constant innovation fueled by an organic development process.• Each open source project benets
from a large community of users who download the software, try it out, and provide feedback and suggested changes. Rather than depending on a single in-house team, open source software design is the
product of many great minds collaborating across the globe. The pace of innovation is limited only by
the amount of time developers can spend.
More rational vendor relationships.• Providers of open source software typically earn revenue through
support subscriptions renewed on an annual basis, giving them an incentive to provide high-quality
support each year and ensure that customers continue to be successful with their software. Because
access to new versions is included in the subscription fee, costs are predictable and consistent compared with the up-front purchases that characterize the traditional proprietary software model.
Freedom from software license fees.• With free downloads available, open source software eliminates
costly software licenses and the cumbersome processes associated with a software purchase. The result is less shelfware and a higher return on investment in application development.
“We’ve been able to attain world-class levels of availability and
performance too. Red Hat and JBoss have proven themselves
to have enterprise-level tools that, when used well, help us
attain what all companies want — great availability, great scale,
and at a reduced cost when compared to proprietary solutions.”
– Ron Rose, CIO, Priceline
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With such compelling advantages, many organizations of all sizes have adopted open source components.
But along with these advantages, enterprise IT organizations or ISVs who integrate open source software
into their infrastructures also confront some new challenges, including:
The need to manage frequent change.• Open source development teams prioritize delivering new ca-
pabilities to community members. Their development process creates a constant ow of new ideas and
new features, so very active projects may develop and deliver substantial new feature sets in every release — even every minor release. As every software engineer knows, constant change means uncertain
stability. The burden of deciding exactly when and how to adopt and test a new version falls on the IT
staff, whose needs for stability typically outweigh the need for the new features.
Variations in component testing and maturity.• While open source middleware components generally
undergo structured functional testing, even the most diligent open source team seldom has the time or
resources to perform the full battery of tests needed to deliver robust software that meets stringent
enterprise requirements. The open source community’s organic testing and feedback process demonstrably can produce very high quality software over time, especially for widely used components. But
newer components or those not widely used may receive only very limited testing.
Granular software components.• Because most open source software projects are focused to deliver a
single component, IT organizations typically need to assemble a number of these components and test
them as an integrated solution in order to meet their organization’s middleware requirements.
Variable access to documentation, training, support, and expertise.• Documentation completeness
and accuracy, availability of training, and availability of technical support can vary enormously among
open source projects. As a result, IT organizations cannot always be sure of getting the timesaving
information and expert help they need. Of course, each open source project creates an ecosystem of
interested developers and users who can often provide suggestions or solutions, but this volunteer effort may not meet the needs of enterprise IT staffs supporting production systems.
Diverse intellectual property agreements.• Though open source software is delivered without license
fees, many companies nd the variety of terms and requirements in open source license agreements
complex and confusing. The problem is compounded when many open source components are used. To
comply with corporate policies and mitigate legal risk, companies must protect their own and others’
intellectual property, which requires documenting and managing a sometimes complex array of agreements. In this context, the open source licensing paradigm can present a management challenge.
“We have realized the value of open source for the
enterprise, especially in the areas of cost savings,
performance, and security.”
- Barry Strasnick, CIO, CitiStreet
Though each of these challenges can be addressed in a straightforward way, taken together they represent
a signicant integration, testing, and management burden for the IT organization. Too often, the result is
longer implementation cycles, extra risk, and higher than expected cost of ownership. So while open source
software can be truly valuable to the organization, it can also produce headaches for IT managers, especially in larger companies using a wide range of platforms and applications.
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