Intel SOA Expressway

One fine morning my manager asked me to look at this appliance and understand the benefits it has to offer as there was a customer specific need. To my surprise I was so fascinated by this Appliance from Intel for this much needed appliance which augments the various needs whether it is hosted services or rich internet applications. The best part is that it supports both Windows and Linux
What is it Anyways?
SOA Expressway is a software-appliance designed to simplify, accelerate, and secure the Enterprise SOA architecture. It expedites SOA deployments by addressing common SOA bottlenecks related to performance, security for XML, Web Services and Legacy Data. SOA Expressway is available for deploying services (SOA), hosted services (SaaS) or Web2.0 (RIA). Requires no additional hardware other than OEM servers and supports Windows and Linux OS’s.
In a Distributed Environment, SOA Expressway facilitates easier management of Security and Performance. The utility Supports SOA, REST and Custom protocols. In single packaged software - Mediations for Service, Data and Security are possible. It can process 1000 Messages/sec using single server and around 10,000 Messages/sec using a couple of servers. In a simple proxy scenario, acts as a broker between service and consumer while in a multi service scenario, pulls data from multiple data sources or services.
Some Scenarios:
1- Simple Proxy
- SOA EW offloads expensive XML transformations, Validations, Filtering and Security handling for various protocols (HTTP, HTTPS, TCP etc..). Can reside behind the firewall and has the ability to function in a cross domain setup, WAN or act as a transformation gateway for Cloud Computing
- Can support large number of XML documents [per second can process 1000/10000 messages on single server and multiple servers respectively ]
- Schema Level Validation tasks, Message Level Security such as digital signatures and encryption
- Convert Binary to XML and vice-versa, Text to XML and vice-versa and most importantly legacy data formats such as Cobol, EDI, HL7
2- Security & Web 2.0 Proxy
- Aides in Threat Prevention areas such as SQL Injection, Denial of Services, SSL Termination
- Aides in Single Sign On. Can delegate Authentication/Authorization on LDAP or SQL Databases. (Not sure of ADFS)
- Avoids costs associated with custom code in implementing the above or purchase of expensive hardware
- For Web 2.0 environments, prevents SQL Injections, XML bombs, Language Injection, SSL Termination as well as delegation of Authentication/Authorization
3- High Performance
- High Availability
- Extensible : Custom Encryption, Reduced Latency and Increased Throughput across network
- [per second can process 1000/10000 messages on single server and multiple servers respectively ]
- Supports DB Queues, Queues
4- SAAS Governance
- Supports hosted applications, No custom hardware, Client Throttling
- Partner on-boarding via API Gateway and Partner API versioning handled by policies instead of code
- Usage Billing and Compliance Monitoring
5- Business Integration
- Expose Services over FTP to external partners to consume legacy HL7 data feed
- Direct DB insertion, XML transformation, Data Mapping via engine
- Supported formats: EDI, HIPA, PDF etc…
- Single software instance and no custom hardware
6- Mainframe Services
- Expose SOAP service to partners providing legacy Cobol feed wrapped in XML
- TCP-Mainframe communication
- Trust Checking to prevent content based attacks
- Avoids latency and supports EDI, HL7 and HIPA formats
7- Performance
Yielded 5,000 Transactions Per Second with a 1KB Message Size having a concurrent user access of 84. The scenario included 2 XSD validations, 1 XSL transformation, 1 SOAP generation and Content Routing to End point. (Note: These tests were performed by Intel)
To conclude, this Software Appliance was a result of 8 years of research and development by Intel and acquisition of Saravega. Most suited for Security and Performance Intensive/Sensitive deployments in the distributed world using SOA design patterns.