Flamenco adds ‘shock absorber’ to Web services

Flamenco Networks is adding a standards “shock absorber” to its Web services management software, enabling users’ systems to become compliant with the latest Web services standards without having to change their code.

Version 4 of Flamenco’s WSM (Web Services Management) platform features a WS-Standards shock absorber — code-named “Monroe,” after the shock-absorber brand — that enables IT operations to update proxies on the fly, the company said. This capability allows users to implement the most recent Web services standards such as WS-Security, the company said.

WSM intercepts SOAP messages off the wire between Web service requesters and providers, and can apply and enforce policies such as versions of specific standards, said John Hanger, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Flamenco.

“You might have customers accessing Web services via a different protocol. Without a solution like Flamenco WSM software, you would have to build those protocols into the Web service itself,” which is labor-intensive, Hanger said. “You’d rather have your developer focusing on business functionality.”

When Web services standards, or specifications, are updated, customers are furnished with an update of WSM that enables conformance to the new standard, Hanger said.

An analyst said Flamenco is recognizing that Web services standards still are very much in development.

“What they’re really saying here is that we can expect the Web services specs to be in considerable flux for a long period of time,” said Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink, in an e-mail response to questions. “As such, many developers are simply throwing their hands up in the air and deciding to wait until the Web services specs are done before doing anything with Web services. Clearly, this is not a good thing for Flamenco, so what they are doing is saying that they will handle a lot of the Web services specs in their product on behalf of the developers that connect to the product, and the product will keep up with the latest specs, thus eliminating the need for developers to have to constantly stay in touch,” he said.

“This level of ‘spec’ management will no doubt come in very handy to Web services developers,” Schmelzer said.

WSM 4 also features improved reliability, in which the previous servlet-based proxy has been replaced with a protocol engine that utilizes an embedded, real-time database, providing queuing and state-management capabilities.

The proxy in Version 4 can handle unexpected events such as power failures, according to Flamenco. When power fails or when the plug is pulled from a server, an important characteristic of a reliable networking infrastructure is the proper handling of messages in-flight at the time of outage, in essence, maintaining system integrity, Hanger said. For example, a message being processed by the Flamenco proxy at the moment of a power failure will be accounted for; it may fail to arrive at its intended destination ultimately, depending on when the power comes back on, what the queuing policies were. But it will be accounted for one way or the other, Hanger said.

Additionally, the Version 4 proxy architecture, previously written in Java and .Net, has been rewritten in C++. “Both [Java and .Net] are great languages for browser applications, but for intercepting network applications, we found about a 10X gain in performance” with C++, Hanger said.

Flamenco WSM 4 pricing starts at $100,000. General availability is in September.