Live from Software AG Processworld 2012: Day 2

On day 2 of ProcessWorld I attended some sessions that were focusing on the 9.0 release. The first one was about a general introduction to webMethods 9.0. It started with a short overview of the new products: webMethods cloudStreams, webMethods Pulse, Command Central, ActiveTransfer, etc. After that they dived into the new functions of the existing components like IntegrationServer, Broker, Optimize, etc. The most important ones are:

For integration server:

• Support for webservice reliable messaging, SFTP and JSON. 
• Worry-free updates with maintenance mode support. You can put the integration server in maintenance mode to perform updates. 
• Local development. 
• BigXML and service caching thanks to the implementation of TerraCotta. 
• WebMethods Command Central Integration. 

For Trading Networks: 

• Community management & partner on-boarding 
• Integration of the new webMethods ActiveTransfer product. 

For BPM: 

• Improved architecture by OSGI enablement of the my webMethods Server. 
• Event-enabled BPM processes can feed webMethods Pulse, Business Events & Mashzone. 
• BPMN 2.0 support for sub-processes & debugging 

Optimize:

• Improved usability & management of KPI data. 
• Enhanced dashboards with MashZone. 
• Improved reliability. 
• WebMethods Command Central Integration 

CentraSite: 

• New business UI for occasional & non-technical users 
• Easy keyword search 
• Event-based automatic promotion across life-cycle states 
• Simplified infrastructure 
• WebMethods Command Central Integration 

Nirvana messaging: 
Something I forgot to mention in my previous blog post is that Nirvana also supports priority messaging and message throttling for bandwidth limitations.
 

Important to mention are the following system requirements for the whole webMethods 9.0 suite.

• There will be ipV6 support 
• Only 64-bit operating systems will be supported 
• The standard JDK is Java 7 
• The ability to define checkpoints & the rollback of deployments  

Another new webMethods product that I didn’t mention yesterday is webMethods ActiveTransfer for Managed File Transfer. There are two major components: ActiveTransfer server & ActiveTransfer proxy. The ActiveTransfer server needs to be installed on an IntegrationServer in the trusted zone of your IT infrastructure. The server part allows you to:

• Configure and manage all server instances centrally. It allows you to define IP banning rules and/or filename or folder restrictions. 
• Manage users and their access privileges by prioritizing file transfers, restrict file transfer actions and inheritance of user settings from templates. 
• Perform post-processing and alerting by the definition of file transfer criteria based triggers. Based on these triggers IntegrationServer services can be invoked or native scripts can be called. 
• Perform scheduled and event-driven transfers 
• Accelerate file transfers in high latency environments by definition of multiple active transfer tunnels. This allows file transfers speed up to 20 times faster. 
• Suspend and resume file transfers by the definition of checkpoints 
• Provide centralized monitoring to keep track of all transfers.

 

The ActiveTransfer proxy server part runs on a reverse gateway IntegrationServer in the DMZ and communicates with third parties.

Author: Dimitri Van Kerckhoven