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BEA Systems AquaLogic Service Bus 2.1: Page 4 of 4

Once we completed our orchestration we activated the session we'd created, and a new version of the orchestration was automatically deployed on our server. AquaLogic provides simple versioning and change tracking, and we could roll back changes at any time with the click of a mouse. Obviously, we don't anticipate or suggest that developers create and test orchestrations on a production server, and neither does BEA. To deploy to a production server we exported the orchestration and its requisite dependencies--automatically determined by AquaLogic--to an archive file and then imported it into the production environment, all from within BEA's Web-based design and administrative environment. Note that all the Eclipse-based products integrate with CVS and some external version control systems. Proprietary environments used a variety of "version control" mechanisms, most of them proprietary and not a good choice for large-scale code management.

We also tried out AquaLogic's monitoring and reporting capabilities, which can be configured at the service layer and include the exposure of process-level variables ... a poor man's BAM, if you will. We created a variable to be carried along in our service orchestration and assign a value to it using AquaLogic's drag-and-drop XQuery/XPath editor. By specifying that the variable should be monitored, we could see the value of the variable in every executed orchestration. This feature can be turned on and off with the click of a button, making it useful for debugging or tracing through a service orchestration.

We were pleasantly surprised by BEA's pricing of AquaLogic--$20,000 per CPU is more than equitable for the features and functionality offered. Of course, you should factor in that you'll require some way to service-enable your database and enterprise applications, and we're certain BEA knows you will, too.

BEA AquaLogic Service Bus 2.1, $20,000.00 (Includes the WLS 9.1 server). Launch Pricing effective until July 31st 2006. BEA Systems, (800) 817-4BEA. www.bea.com