Dynamic Routing using WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus (WESB)

Rajiv Ramachandran, Practice Director, Enterprise Integration / Solution Architect

One of the most common requirements I have heard from customers who are using an ESB is to say that I want to dynamically route information to several of my end systems. I don't want to change my code when i introduce a new system to the mix that requires the same data.

Careful analysis is required to implement a solution to this requirement as there are two parts to this.

1. The ability to invoke an end point dynamically (the requirement statement is crystal clear about that).
2. The second part is how do I define my routing logic? How do i describe it? How can i change it at runtime?

Setting the endpoint header dynamically on the endpoint is supported by the Service Component Architecture (SCA) framework and therefore we do have an easy solution to the first part of the requirement. However there is no standard primitive or a defined approach in the WESB product to achieve the second aspect of the dynamicity requirement.

There are multiple solutions to this

1. We can use WebSphere Business Fabric (WBSF) to provide this capability.
2. Or we can build custom solutions to achieve this goal.

One such solution approach that we have used is to use Business Rules component in WebSphere Process Server (WPS) to be a 'Routing Controller' and define business rules to describe the routing logic. The out of the box capability of business rules in WPS provides us with an editor to edit to these rules and dynamically update them at runtime. The pros of this approach are that we don't have to custom code any of the logic and we are able to use the out of the box rules component. However, since the business rules components are part of WPS, this solution is not applicable for pure WESB customers.

Rajiv Ramachandran first joined Prolifics as a Consultant, and is currently the Practice Director for Enterprise Integration. He has 11 years experience in the IT field — 3 of those years at IBM working as a developer at its Object Technology Group and its Component Technology Competency Center in Bangalore. He was then an Architect implementing IBM WebSphere Solutions at Fireman’s Fund Insurance. Currently, he specializes in SOA and IBM’s SOA-related technologies and products. An author at the IBM developerWorks community, Rajiv has been a presenter at IMPACT and IBM's WebSphere Services Technical Conference.