Apache ODE (Apache Orchestration Director Engine) is a software coded in
Java as a workflow engine to manage
business processes which have been expressed in the Web Services Business Process Execution Language (
WS-BPEL) via a website. It was made by the
Apache Software Foundation
The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) is an American nonprofit corporation (classified as a 501(c)(3) organization in the United States) to support a number of open source software projects. The ASF was formed from a group of developers of the A ...
and released in a stable format on March 23, 2018. The software principally communicates with one or more
Web services, sending and receiving messages, manipulating data and handling exceptions (errors) as defined by any given process. The engine is capable of running both long and short living processes to coordinate all the services that make up a service or application (
orchestration
Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra (or, more loosely, for any musical ensemble, such as a concert band) or of adapting music composed for another medium for an orchestra. Also called "instrumentation", orc ...
).
As of August 2019, development of the software has been discontinued, and the project has been moved into the
Apache Attic.
Communication
WS-BPEL itself is based upon the
XML language and includes a number of ways in which business processes can be expressed. These include conditional clauses, repeating loops, calls to web services and the exchange of messages. Where interfaces with web services are required, it makes use of Web Services Description Language (
WSDL) to express them. Messages can be handled in a flexible way by reading either part or all of the message into variables, which can then be used for onward communication.
The engine has two communication layers, with which it interacts with the outside world:
*
Apache Axis2 integration layer: supports the communication over
Web services.
* Layer based on the
JBI standard: supports communication via JBI messages.
Features
* Side-by-side support for both the WS-BPEL 2.0
OASIS
In ecology, an oasis (; ) is a fertile area of a desert or semi-desert environment'ksar''with its surrounding feeding source, the palm grove, within a relational and circulatory nomadic system.”
The location of oases has been of critical imp ...
standard and the legacy BPEL4WS 1.1 vendor specification.
* Supports 2 communication layers: one based on
Axis2 (Web Services http transport) and another one based on the
JBI standard (using
ServiceMix).
* Support for the HTTP WSDL binding, allowing invocation of
REST-style web services.
* Possibility to map process variables externally to a database table of your choice.
* High level API to the engine that allows you to integrate the core with virtually any communication layer.
* Hot-deployment of your processes.
* Compiled approach to
BPEL that provides detailed analysis and validation at the command line or at deployment.
* Management interface for processes, instances and messages.
Embedding
Apache ODE is embedded and an important part of the
Jboss projects RiftSaw (
WS-BPEL 2.0 engine) and also in the follow-up
Switchyard, which is a service delivery
framework
A framework is a generic term commonly referring to an essential supporting structure which other things are built on top of.
Framework may refer to:
Computing
* Application framework, used to implement the structure of an application for an op ...
for service-oriented applications.
See also
*
WS-BPEL
References
External links
*
/ode.apache.org/ Apache ODE home page*
/www.jboss.org/riftsaw RiftSaw*
/www.jboss.org/switchyard SwitchYard{{Apache Software Foundation
ODE
Beta software