WSO2 kicked its Carbon 3.0 Apache-based middleware platform up a notch today with the announcement of five new releases that take advantage of Carbon 3.0’s process-oriented components and building blocks for cloud computing.
Among the new offerings from the Mountain View, Calif. 
company are Business Process Server (BPS) 2.0, Data Services Server (DSS) 2.5, Business Activity Monitor (BAM) 1.1, Gadget Server 1.1, and Mashup Server 2.1. All are designed to aid users in customizing IT application and Web service deployments across servers — and in private and public clouds. [Disclosure: WSO2 is a sponsor of BriefingsDirect podcasts.]
Based on the componentized OSGI-compliant Carbon platform, all five inherit the functionality that was added to Carbon 3.0 in June. This includes:
- Component Manager, which provides an interface that lets developers simply point-and-click to extend the capabilities of the middleware. It then acquires, installs, and provisions the runtime automatically
- Web Services Dynamic Discovery (WS-Discovery) support to automate the detection and configuration of Web service endpoints
- Enhanced integration with the WSO2 Governance Registry, facilitating large clustered deployments and cloud implementations
“The lean approach of our WSO2 Carbon platform means enterprise IT teams can quickly deliver
projects using just the functionality they need, and over the long term they benefit from a clean, interoperable and effective enterprise architecture,” said Paul Fremantle, co-founder and CTO. “Our newest products based on Carbon 3.0 continue that commitment with a wealth of new functionality that can be customized to an IT project’s needs.”
Business processes
BPS enables developers to easily compose and orchestrate business processes using WS-BPEL. Version 2.0 adds support for two emerging open source human-centric process specifications, which are currently under OASIS standardization review. Additional new features include Scheduled instance cleanup, Java Message Service (JVM) API support, and XML Path extension support.
DSS enables database administrators and database programmers to create and manage WS-* style Web services and REST-style Web resources using enterprise data. Version 2.5 adds several features to offer greater flexibility and efficiency in creating and managing data services, including:
- Contract-first data service creation in which developers start with XML schema and WSDL definitions to create their data services.
- Batch mode for insert, update and delete operations
- Boxcarring support, meaning developers now “boxcar” a number of service requests into a single database transaction
- Data validation logic
- Support for additional data types including array, binary input/output, and Carbon data sources
BAM provides real-time visibility into service-oriented architecture (SOA) processes, transactions and workflows. Version 1.1 adds support for the widely adopted Oracle relational database management system (RDBMS), as well as support for deployment on the JBoss, Apache Tomcat and WebLogic application servers.
Our newest products based on Carbon 3.0 continue that commitment with a wealth of new functionality that can be customized to an IT project’s needs.
Gadget Server lets users implement and modify a true Web-based portal that can be accessed anywhere via a browser. Enhancements to version 1.1 include inter-gadget communication support, a gadget editor, and support for i18n.
Mashup Server provides the reusability, security, reliability and governance required for an SOA. Version 2.1 makes it easier to share mashups by providing the ability to upload a mashup together with all the required resources in a ZIP folder.
BPS 2.0, DSS 2.5, BAM 1.1, Gadget Server 1.1, and Mashup Server 2.1 are available today as software downloads and as WSO2 Cloud Virtual Machines running on the Amazon Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2), Linux Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM), or VMware ESX. As fully open source solutions released under the Apache License 2.0, the products do not carry any licensing fees. WSO2 offers a range of additional service and support options.
