service oriented online architecture using mule

Service-Oriented Online Architecture with MuleA different approach to building a SOA

Feroz khan

Agenda 1.Business context and problems faced

2. The idea of a service-oriented online architecture

3. How and why we selected Mule4. Overview and examples of Mule use cases5. Best practices and learnings

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Business context and problems faced

Existing online infrastructure was complex, expensive

to maintain and could not be used by other portals

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Corporate Network (Head Quarter)

Portal

DistributionDMZPartner LAN

(*) as Reverse Proxy

Business logic and backend access in the portal needs to available to other portals

Server applications only run on specialized hardware and application platform

Everyone is talking to everyone, point-to-point communication is difficult to manage

Web-Server (*)

Web- Server (*)

Browser Oracle

DB2

BackendBackend

BackendBackend

Client-Application

Client-Application

DataPlatform

ComponentApplication

Platform

Online-ServerServer-

ApplicationServer-

Application- Spare Parts- Technical

Info- …

An ESB-centric service-oriented online architecture is

easier to manage and more extensible

4


Online Client


DMZ

PrimaryESB Backend

Portal

Online- Server


Local Area Network

Web- Server (*)

Web- Server (*)

Browser

■ The migration of the server applications to standardized hardware proved to be rather difficult due to close coupling to platform

■ To get rid of the application platform components we had toidentify the all required services for the online scenario

■ Then a light-weight surrogate based on Mule was implemented to provide these services to the applications instead

■ The portal independent services had to be identified andextracted from the portal

■ Access to all backend systems is now provided by one central Mule ESB instance, implementing logging and security

■ The maintenance costs for the simplified architecture havealready decreased significantly

■ New server application instances can be deploy transparently within hours instead of days now


The goal was to simplify the architecture, unify the

waybackend systems are

accessed and cut operation costs

5

Agenda 1. Business context and problems faced 2.The idea of a service-oriented online

architecture3. How and why we selected Mule4. Overview and examples of Mule use cases5. Best practices and learnings

6

The improved service-oriented online

architecture can becomposed using different

building blocks

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The idea of a service-oriented online architecture

Online Client


DMZ

PrimaryESB Backend

Portal

Online- Server


Local Area Network

Web- Server (*)

Web- Server (*)

Web- Server (*)

LocalESB

Browser

A secondary ESB building block enables the

deploymentof dedicated online servers

in national networks

8


LocalESB

Corporate Network(Head Quarter)

Primary ESB Backend

Portal

Online- Server

National Corporate Network (USA)

Secondary ESB

DMZ

Backend‘

Local Area Network


Web-Server (*)

Web- Server (*)

Web-Server (*)

Browser

Online-Client

Multiple portal and online server blocks can be

combinedto support different user

groups and network locations

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Corporate Network

PrimaryESB Backend

Portal

Online- Server

National CorporateNetwork (USA)

SecondaryESB

DMZ

Backend‘

Local AreaNetwork

Web- Server (*)

Web- Server (*) (*) as Reverse Proxy

LocalESB

Browser

Online- Client

Web-Server (*)

Portal

Online- Server

Agenda1. Business context and problems faced2. The idea of a service-oriented online

architecture 3.How and why we selected Mule

4. Overview and examples of Mule use cases5. Best practices and learnings

10

■We did not Google „open source ESB“ to select Mule …

■ Instead we did a qualitative and quantitative comparison of major open source ESB products using different criteria:

■ Primary: professional maintenance, commercial support with SLAs, licensing, performance,operations by IT department possible

■ Secondary: documentation, code quality, activity and size of community, Spring support, sync and async communication, supported standards, app server integration, development tools

■ Mule quickly emerged as the favored ESB product, followed by Fuse ESB and WSO2

■ Static analysis of the Mule sources (Sonar, Structure101) showed acceptable quality

■ Modularization and project structure looks well- thought-out and enables light-weight deployment

■ Good code quality, in spite of found violations and partially low documentation

■ Test coverage is reasonably high to ensure correct function in case of changes

How and why we selected Mule

Based on the proposed architecture scenarios we

couldidentify the requirements

on the ESB product

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■ Chosen products: Mule ESB, WSO2 and Fuse ESB

■ Are all 3 uses cases supported?

■ Development model: used frameworks,supported IDEs, build tools?

■ Learning curve: How good is the documentation? Clear API?

■ Development effort: How long does ittake to implement the uses cases?

■ Mule ESB scored best in comparison, closely followed by WSO2

How and why we selected MuleImplementation of a small PoC prototype to get a firstimpression of the chosen

products

121 2 3WS-Call POJO Provider External WS-Call (Asnyc) WS-Proxy with

Transform

■ Different load scenarios with constant and increasing parallel requests (Apache JMeter)

■ Measurement of performance relevant metrics using Software-EKG

■ Live profiling of system behavior (JProfiler)

■ All findings have been reported to MuleSoft

■ Together with MuleSoft we were able to solveall the found issues:

■ MuleSoft supplied a working patch for the Registry synchronization issue within 2 days

■ Other issues could simply be addressed using the optimized configuration parameters (thread pool settings, …) supplied to us

■ This was decisive for the confidence and the final decision for Mule ESB

How and why we selected MuleIntensive performance tests uncovered several

findings(with Mule 3.1.1) …

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architecture3. How and why we selected Mule 4.Overview and examples of Mule use cases 5. Best practices and learnings

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Clustered deployment of Mule ESB as a web

applicationfor scalability and high

availability■Requirement: Mule ESB had to be deployed as a Java web application to be operated by the IT department

■Embedding Mule into a web app is pretty

straight forward using the a context listener

■Custom listener implementation required to customize working directory and various other system properties

■Each Glassfish v2.1 app server instance runs with 512mb heap space on SuSe linux

■The reverse proxies are Apache 2.2 instances using mod_proxy with stickyness

■The final WAR is simply assembled from the Maven artifacts of the individual Mule apps

■Hot-deployment of individual apps not required

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Overview and examples of Mule use cases


Unified web service interface to access details

userfrom heterogeneous data

sources

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■ Access to the endpoint is controlledusing a Spring security filter

■ Each data source has specific POJO implementation or private flow

■ Choice is based on payload using a Groovy evaluator

■ Only minor Java code required

■ Web service interface and types

■ Custom transformers

■ Choice uses CXF operation header

■ XSLT to transform XML/RPC to JAXB XML structure


Web service to XML/RPC service adapter to access

theBZST service for simple and

qualified VAT checks

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■ Web service interface and types defined asPOJI and POJOs with JAX-WS annotations

■ The service component only performs validation and preprocessing of request


Web service to email service adapter to send

supportrequests to a ticketing

backend system

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■ The actual sending using an SMTPconnector is performed asynchronous

■ Custom transformer uses Velocity to convert request object to email body


architecture3. How and why we selected Mule4. Overview and examples of Mule use cases 5.Best practices and learnings

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■ Mule provides several built-in components to test Mule XML and flow definitions

■ The MuleFunctionalTest allowed us to test our flows within the IDE

■ No deployment to a standalone instance required, thus reducing turn-around times

■ The MuleClient is not really intuitive to use

■ Smart combination of SoapUI test cases together with mock services allowed 100% local and off-site development

■ Learning: develop as much as possible asPOJOs and use „traditional“ unit testing

■ Learning: take the time to write a good mock for the service you are integrating

Best practices and learningsTest driven development using MuleFunctionalTests,

SoapUI tests and mock services

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■ „The Leanest, Meanest ESB: Mule ESB is the world's most efficient Enterprise Service Bus” (http://www.mulesoft.com/mule-esb-small-footprint)

■ We went well below the mentioned figures by building a custom Mule distribution tuned and optimized for our specific use cases

■ Based on the default distribution assembly XML found in the Mule community sources, we

1. got rid of everything not required in production, mainly docs and examples, but also not required Tanuki EXE wrapper binaries, etc.pp.;

2. selected only the required Mule modules and transports our uses cases really required, this reduced the amount of 3rd party libs significantly;

3. used Maven dependency management to have full control of all used 3rd party libraries, used more recent versions where possible (e.g. Spring, CXF, Saxon)

4. added our Mule apps and their dependencies, then repackaged

■ Thorough load tests lead to optimized JVM parameters and high performance:-Xmx=128m -Xms=128m -XX:MaxPermSize=64m -XX:NewRatio=2 -XX:SurvivorRatio=12 -XX:+UseParallelGC-XX:+UseParallelOldGC

Best practices and learnings

Building a custom Mule distribution for 100%

control ofall dependencies and optimal performance

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96 MB

30 MB

37 MB

http://www.mulesoft.com/mule-esb-small-footprint






















■ A migration of the whole infrastructure in one go would have been impossible; the system needs to be available around the clock

■ Instead a staged migration of the infrastructurecomponents and applications has been used:

■ Phase 1: Migration of all online servers, application by application, introduction of the primary ESB with first required services

■ Phase 2: Integration of a new online portal, operated inparallel to the old portal infrastructure

■ Phase 3: Migration of all „legacy“ portals to access the new online infrastructure components

■ After each phase the behavior of the new components was monitored closely to detect any problems in production

■ The services and backend systems integrated by the primary ESB instance constantly grew (I might still be growing in next phases)

Best practices and learningsNo big bang: start small and migrate in several

phases

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Questions & Answers

service oriented online architecture using mule

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