Ability to handle network-failures in a distributed environment

Since most process-driven SOA platform suites have a centralized hub-and-spoke design, any network failure results in end-point applications disconnecting from the broker, requiring fault-tolerance to be pre-programmed into the adapters.

Fiorano's Message Driven SOA platform does not suffer from this problem because Fiorano Peer Servers provide an in-built "store-and-forward" mechanism at the end-points of the network, making all deployed Services oblivious to network failures. If the network fails for any reason, Services keep executing and publishing data into the local Fiorano Peer; when the network comes up again, the transmission of data picks up where it left off, with no data loss. Thus, the Fiorano Enterprise Service Bus™ automatically provides fault-tolerance for all Services deployed across the network. Since error-handling does not have to be programmed separately into each Service or adapter, the overall implementation complexity is significantly reduced.

Fiorano's in-built support for handling network failures in a distributed environment is particularly important for database synchronization applications (characterized by Gartner as one of the three major types of integrations that are implemented across enterprises). The Figure below shows a typical database synchronization application.

Click image for a larger view

The figure illustrates a database synchronization, in which output from an Oracle database on machine 1 is passed into an SQL database on machine 2 (usually running in a different geographical location). Such integrations are commonplace; for instance, in a typical enterprise, order databases need to be synchronized across multiple offices that are often in different countries.

In the above integration scenario, if the network fails for any reason, none of the Database Services are affected: both services continue to operate seamlessly because they are only connected to the local Fiorano Peer Server running within the local LAN. The Fiorano Peers communicate with each other over the network and incorporate a "store and forward" mechanism for data transmission; when the network goes down, data is automatically backed up within the Fiorano Peer to which the Database Service is connected; when the network comes up again, this data is transmitted starting from the point where it first left off, with no loss of data.

This in-built fault-tolerance mechanism extends to all Services deployed on the Fiorano network. It dramatically reduces development and deployment time because fault-tolerance and fault avoidance semantics to not have to be separately programmed into each individual adapter, as is the case with most process-driven SOA suites today.