ESB Co-processing

CPU-intensive XML transformations can degrade Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) performance

The Problem: XML Processing Bottlenecks

Increasingly Enterprise Service Buses are being employed by organizations to connect service-centric applications into a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Enterprise Service Buses are software middleware products that abstract service mediation and translations from the service endpoints to ensure maximum integration flexibility and agility. However, in some scenarios requiring high volume, processor intensive operations on XML messages like schema mapping, data validation, message encryption or signing / signature validation there is a requirement to offload processor intensive operations. Otherwise, these computations can significantly degrade the performance of an ESB. One option is to delegate XML processing to the service endpoints themselves. However, this would burden the application endpoints with computational demands separate from their core role. An ideal solution would therefore be to offload computation of XML operations from an ESB to a purpose built co-processor.

Solution: Dedicated Hardware

For an ESB co-processor to effectively offload high volume or large document XML processing from an ESB it needs to have specialized hardware to accelerate XML processes like message validation, transformation, signing and encryption. For it to act as a shared resource for the ESB it also needs to be addressable as a shared resource on the ESB and it needs to have flexibility in how it returns message processing jobs.

Layer 7 Value: XML Acceleration

Layer 7 has engineered its family of XML appliances with ESBs in mind. All of the SecureSpan XML appliances can act as both on-ramps and co-processors to an ESB. Acting as an on-ramp, the SecureSpan XML appliances can secure, cleanse and normalize data before it reaches the ESB. Acting as a hardware accelerated co-processor the SecureSpan XML appliances can sit as a shared resource off the ESB performing high volume or large message XML computations without burdening the ESB infrastructure. In both cases Layer 7’s advanced policy based routing can be used to define how requests and responses to the co-processor are handled.

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