FOREST HILL, Md., Feb. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) today announced the graduation of Apache Synapse from a sub-project of the Apache Web Services Project to an independent Top-Level Project (TLP). Joining the Foundation's 57 other TLPs, Apache Synapse is overseen by its own Project Management Committee that is responsible for the oversight of all code released under the Apache Synapse name.

In addition, the new Project announced the release of Apache Synapse v1.1.1, a high performance, easy-to-use, Open Source Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). With Apache Synapse v1.1.1, organizations can easily build Service Oriented Architectures, integrate and manage Web Services, and enable applications to communicate in an efficient, scalable, and cost-effective manner -- one of the biggest challenges faced by enterprises today.

"The advancement of Apache Synapse to a Top-Level Project reflects a wider maturity of the project, growing developer interest, and a different appeal and approach to the other Open Source ESBs in the marketplace," said Paul Fremantle, Chair of the Apache Synapse Project Management Committee and Vice President of Technical Sales at WSO2 Inc. "We have grown beyond just integrating Web Services -- by offering the flexibility to access different applications, formats and protocols across the enterprise, we have grown to be a highly capable Enterprise Service Bus."

Apache Synapse v1.1.1 alleviates the traditionally cumbersome development and integration process; enterprises can reliably employ Open Source through Synapse's support for numerous open standards such as HTTP, SOAP, FTP, SMTP, XML, XSLT, XPath, JMS, Web Services Security (WSS), Web Services Reliable Messaging (WS-RM), and more. In addition, Synapse supports a number of useful functions out-of-the-box without programming, and can be extended using popular programming languages such as Java, JavaScript, Ruby, and Groovy.

A lightweight, Open Source component, Apache Synapse v1.1.1 is easily integrated into wider solutions. It allows administrators to simply and easily configure message routing, intermediation, transformation and logging. The runtime has been designed to be completely asynchronous, non-blocking and streaming.

"Recent projects based on Synapse have included connecting multiple back-end systems including record-based files, DB2 mainframe-based systems, and IBM MQSeries," added Fremantle. "The simple, modular nature of Synapse meant we solved the integration challenges in hours not weeks."

New Zealand-based integrators Black Coffee Software are using Apache Synapse to manage and mediate services for a multi-national enterprise.

"Synapse's simplicity of configuration, ease of extensibility, and integration within an Apache Axis 2 container were the key factors in our choice. Synapse's speed and stability, non-blocking I/O support, and responsive development community then sealed the decision," said Craig Wilson, Director and Chief Technology Officer of Black Coffee Software. "Synapse passed all our performance benchmark, load and memory leak tests with flying colors. Synapse has met all our requirements and has proven to be an excellent component in our SOA deployments."

Released under the Apache Software License v2.0, Apache Synapse v1.1.1 can be downloaded at http://synapse.apache.org/

ABOUT THE APACHE SOFTWARE FOUNDATION

Established in 1999, The Apache Software Foundation provides organizational, legal, and financial support for a broad range of Open Source software projects, including Apache HTTP Server -- the world's most popular Web server software for more than a decade. The Foundation provides an established framework for intellectual property and financial contributions that simultaneously limits contributors' potential legal exposure. Through a collaborative and meritocratic development process, Apache projects deliver enterprise-grade, freely available software products that attract large communities of users. The pragmatic Apache License makes it easy for all users, commercial and individual, to deploy Apache products. For more information, please see http://www.apache.org/

CONTACT: Sally Khudairi of The Apache Software Foundation,
+1-617-921-8656, press@apache.org; or Paul Fremantle of Apache Synapse Project
Management Committee, pzf@apache.org

Web Site: http://synapse.apache.org/