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Fiorano SOA Platform 2006 3.7

Fiorano SOA Platform 2006 is a J2EE ESB with several moving parts. All administration is accomplished over Java fat clients, and there are several to choose from depending on your role in the organization. Fiorano employs a peer-to-peer hybrid architecture, requiring the definition of peer servers as the nodes on which ESB processes run. This means all service orchestrations must be deployed on specific nodes, and you can specify backup and failover nodes during deployment.

In November we began our quest to find the ultimate ESB (enterprise service bus) suite by issuing an invitation to a dozen vendors. Eight took us up on our challenge and sent software to our Green Bay, Wis., business applications lab, home of our fictional widget maker, NWC Inc.
Over the ensuing weeks, we posted regular updates from Lori MacVittie in NWC's Real-World Labs. We also made available our vendor invites, test plan and other materials from the testing process. Next week rolled out the individual product evaluations from our ESB vendor participants, including BEA, Cape Clear, Fiorano, IBM, Oracle, Sonic Software, Software AG and TIBCO.
Now, see the final results as we reveal our Editor's Choice winner and post our market analysis and Interactive Report Card so you can build your own ESB shortlist.

Fiorano manages its components using JMX (Java Management Extensions), and the facilities within Fiorano Studio make this painfully obvious. All BPEL processes are orchestrated in Fiorano Studio and in future releases the modeling tool--currently a Java fat client--will be moved to this tool. All JMX management is accomplished through this tool as well, though it's a bit confusing to move around in and lacks flexibility. In addition, the JMX terminology is overwhelming and makes administrating the environment tedious. Fiorano said it is in the process of "English-izing" its JMX interface and removing pieces that aren't necessary for 99.99 percent of all configurations. We were pleased to hear this, as well as the decision to move functionality from other Fiorano tools into Fiorano Studio.

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