JBoss ESB 4.2 GA

Getting Started With JBoss ESB

JBESB-GS-9/5/07

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JBoss ESB 4.2 GA

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Contents

About This Guide

What This Guide Contains

The goal of this document is to assist you in getting test applications up and running on JBossESB as quickly as possible.

Audience

This guide is for anyone who is wants to quickly understand how to install and use JBoss ESB 4.2 GA.

Prerequisites

None.

Organization

This guide contains the following chapter:

1. Chapter 1, Installation: This chapter reviews prerequisites (software needed to operate JBossESB), downloading JBossESB, and building JBossESB.

2. Chapter 2, Trailblazer: A quick summary of the trailblazer example application.

Documentation Conventions

The following conventions are used in this guide:

Table 1 Formatting Conventions

Additional Documentation

In addition to this guide, the following guides are available in the JBoss ESB 4.2 GA documentation set:

1. JBoss ESB 4.2 GA Trailblazer Guide: Provides guidance for using the trailblazer example.

2. JBoss ESB 4.2 GA Administration Guide: How to manage JBossESB.

3. JBoss ESB 4.2 GA Programmers Guide: How to use JBossESB.

4. JBoss ESB 4.2 GA Release Notes: Information on the differences between this release and previous releases.

5. JBoss ESB 4.2 GA Services Guides: Various documents related to the services available with JBossESB.

Contacting Us

Questions or comments about JBoss ESB 4.2 GA should be directed to our support team.

Chapter 1

Getting Started

The quickest way to get started using JBoss ESB is by running one of the quickstarts in the samples/quickstarts folder. This will also perform a basic validation of your system. Before doing this however, be sure to check that your system meets the following minimum requirements:

1. JDK 5 (v1.5.0_06 recommended)

2. Ant (v1.6.5 recommended)

3. JBoss Application Server 4.2.1.GA or JBoss ESB Server 4.2.0.GA

There are three ways to run JBossESB. You can deploy it to JBossAS / JBossESB Server, run standalone, or deploy it to Tomcat. The first step is have to locate the 'deployment.properties' in the install directory, and edit the properties set in this file. This document assumes you have Ant (1.6.5 or higher) and Java5 installed on your machine, and that you have a fresh copy of JBossAS. So now go and download the JBoss ESB 4.2 GA distribution from http://labs.jboss.com/portal/jbossesb/downloads

There are three corresponding distribution versions, jbossesb-server-{version}, jbossesb-{version} and jbossesb-{version}-src. The standalone JBossESB Server execution requires the jbossesb-server-{version} distribution while deployed execution requires the jbossesb-{version} distribution.

The JBossESB Server is provided as a convenient and lightweight container to deploy to. It contains the majority of the components of the JBoss application server, but does not contain EJB3. The main advantage of using the ESB Server over using the JBoss 4.2.1.GA application server is a much quicker boot time, which is helpful during development.

Deploy JBoss ESB to JBossAS 4.2.1.GA or JBossESB 4.2.0.GA Server

2. Use jbossesb-{version}/iinstall/deployment.properties.example as a template to create install.deployment.properites.

3. Edit your version of install/deployment.properties. Open this file and edit the following lines if needed:

   # application server root directory

   org.jboss.esb.server.home=/jboss-4.2.0.GA

   # the instance of jboss you are running(default)

   org.jboss.esb.server.config=default

2. Run 'ant' (default target) from the install directory. This will deploy JBossESB to your JBossAS instance. It copies several .sar and .esb archives files and directories (jbossesb.esb, jbpm.esb, jbrules.esb, smooks.esb, spring.esb, soap.esb) into the application server's deploy directory.

3. You can deploy custom code (actions) by deploying the '.esb' archives into the deploy directory.

4. Start your application server.

ESB archive deployment strategies

JBossESB is packaged and shipped with base services. A service should be deployed in an ESB archive consisting of an action code + configuration. The idea behind an ESB archive is that it is a deployable service unit. An ESB archive is simply a zip file with an .esb extension. You can deploy as many ESB archives as you please. You can influence the deployment order of archives using the deployment.xml. Typically you would deploy an ESB archive to the 'deploy' directory. ESB archives should enable you to move services between servers simply by moving the corresponding ESB archive. An ESB archive file has the following structure:

├───META-INF
│   ├───jboss-esb.xml
│   ├───<deployment.xml>
│   └───MANIFEST.MF
├───<java classes>
├───<jars>
└───<queue-service.xml>

where,

• <jboss-esb.xml>: contains the service configuration (listener and actions), as well as provider configuration.

• <deployment.xml>: is optional, but can be used for 2 reasons:

  • make this .esb archive depend on other archives, to specify classloading order.

  • make the deployment of this .esb archive scoped.

• <java classes>: your custom action classes in standard package hierarchy.

• <jars>: additional jar archives your actions depend on.

• <queue-service.xml>: if the 'providers' section of the jboss-esb.xml references queues or topics, you can deploy their configuration in the ESB archive. Note that this is strictly a convenience and any other way to deploy these queues is fine too. We recommend this approach to keep your deployments as self-contained as possible therefore keeping dependency management simple.

JBossESB ships with a number of standard service archives:

• jbossesb.esb - internal services like the DeadLetterService,

• jbrules.esb - needed for rules evaluation using JBossRules, for services like the Content-Based Router

• jbpm.esb - needed for default provider of Business Process Management jBPM, and

• smooks.esb - default message transformation engine Smooks.

These services are deployed by default, but you should be able to remove them if you don't need these service deployments.

1. You cannot (yet) deploy ESB archives to the Tomcat deployment.

The Hello World QuickStart

This QuickStart allows you get up and running with JBossESB, out of the box. It is located in the distribution under samples/quickstarts/helloworld.

To run this QuickStart:

1. Start your Server in a way that allows you to view the output console. If you are on Windows, it is preferable not to run JBoss as a Windows Service for the purposes of this guide.

2. From a command terminal window, change directory into the samples/quickstarts/helloworld directory.

3. Make sure that install/deployment.properties has the correct config and home directory settings for your server.

4. Type “ant deploy” to deploy the helloworld .esb package archive to your application server.

5. Type “ant runtest”.

6. Switch back to your application server's console. You should soon see a “Hello World” message appear in your application server's console.

7. That's it! The QuickStart ran successfully. Your environment is properly configured for JBossESB.

You can find more detailed directions on how to setup the quickstart examples by running “ant help-quickstarts” under any of the specific quickstart directories. To get information on how to run a particular quickstart under different deployment scenarios, change directory to the specific quickstart and type “ant help”.

Components of the QuickStart

The following diagram illustrates the sequence of events that take place in this QuickStart. It touches on a number of the key concepts within JBossESB¹.

Window1 shows each of the main “ESB” components used in this sample:

1. Service Registry: This is a JAXR Registry implementation. In this QuickStart, the registry uses RMI based communication. See docs/services/RegistryConfiguration.pdf for more details on the Registry Service.

2. JMS Gateway Listener: A “Gateway Listener” is one of the key architectural components within JBossESB. This listener type is, as its name would suggest, the gateway to the ESB from endpoints outside the domain of the ESB. In this case, we're using a JMS Gateway.

3. The ESB Aware Service Listener: The “FirstService:SimpleListener” ESB Aware Service Listener listens for “ESB Aware” messages on “queue/quickstart_helloworld_Request_gw”. This introduces you further to the concept of ESB “Aware” and “Unaware” messages. We will touch on these next.

ESB Aware and Unaware Messages

JBossESB has a well defined concept of what a message is. This is defined fully in xml/message.xsd. This construct makes it possible to pass decorated messages payloads between components of the ESB. The message payload is typically stored in the message “Body” (see the Programmers Guide).

This makes a lot of sense from the point of services in within the ESB domain being able to collaborate effectively. However, it is not practical to expect endpoints outside the domain of a JBossESB deployment to be “aware” of these internal ESB constructs. For this reason, JBossESB has the concept of ESB Aware and Unaware Messages and Endpoints, with the Gateway acting as the bridge (adapter) between the two worlds.

QuickStart Sequence of Events

After starting the ESB in Window1 and before any “Hello World” messages are put on the bus, the “FirstService:SimpleJMSService“ Service is registered with the Registry Service.

The sequence of events in the Hello World QuickStart are as follows:

1. ESB Unaware JMS Client endpoint puts an ESB Unaware “Hello World” Message (plain String Object) into JMS Queue “queue/quickstart_helloworld_Request”.

2. The JMS Gateway Listener receives the ESB Unaware message. The Gateways Job is to adapt this message by making it an ESB Aware Message for consumption by an ESB Aware Endpoint.

3. The JMS Gateway Listener uses the registry to lookup the Endpoint Reference (EPR) for “FirstService:SimpleJMSService” Service. This works out to be JMS Queue “queue/quickstart_helloworld_Request_gw”.

4. The JMS Gateway Listener “adapts” the message into an ESB Aware message and places it into JMS Queue “queue/=quickstart_helloworld_Request_gw”.

5. “FirstService:SimpleJMSService” Service receives the message.

6. “FirstService:SimpleJMSService” Service extracts the payload from the message and prints it to the console.

Running other Quickstarts

Once you have successfully run the Helloworld QuickStart and understand the concepts involved, there are many other Quickstarts to try. Please note that the Quickstarts have different requirements which are documented in their respective readme.txt, and that not all of the Quickstarts will run in every deployment. Below is a suggested map of Quickstarts to follow in order :

Quickstarts Trailmap:

1. helloworld

2. helloworld_action

3. more_action

4. helloworld_file_action

5. helloworld_ftp_action

6. simple_cbr

7. fun_cbr

8. business_service

9. business_rules_service

10. scripting_groovy

11. transform_CSV2XML

12. transform_XML2POJO

13. transform_XML2XML_simple

14. transform_XML2XML_date_manipulation

15. aggregator

16. bpm_orchestration1

17. bpm_orchestration2

18. webservice_consumer1

19. webservice_producer

Chapter 2

TrailBlazer

Overview

JBoss TrailBlazers and Demo Applications are designed to help you get up and running quickly with JBoss products and technologies. We encourage you to Run them, Download them, and enjoy the learning process!

The Loan Broker TrailBlazer example was developed to verify your JBossESB installation and also to exhibit some of the numerous capabilities of JBossESB. This example was based on information from Enterprise Integration Patterns, along with the example found at JavaZone 2005.

For details of configuring and running the TrailBlazer, see the accompanying “Trailblazer” document.