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h1. What is Petals ESB?

[Petals ESB|http://petals.ow2.org] is an open-source Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) provided by the [OW2 Middleware Consortium|http://www.ow2.org].
ESB, and Petals ESB in particular, are generally associated with Service Oriented Architectures (SOA).

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More concretely, Petals ESB is a Java platform that can be used to interconnect heterogeneous systems, applications and services. It acts as a mediation and a communication layer. Its architecture and the standards it supports make it a valuable solution for both integration and SOA projects.

Reusing monolithic applications by exposing them as services in the bus, enriching and plugging them with new services built on the latest standards, is one possible usage of Petals ESB. Other usages of Petals ESB are listed [in the next sections|Petals Usage].

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Petals ESB is built with and on top of agile technologies such as [Java Business Integration (JBI)|http://www.jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=208] and [the FRACTAL Software Component Framework|http://fractal.ow2.org] provided by the OW2 consortium. Note that in 2008, Petals ESB was certified by SUN Microsystems as a fully-compliant JBI implementation.

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h1. Features

Petals ESB offer several and various features.
We here list the main ones:
* *Distributivity:* Petals ESB is distributed platform. Each deployed instance has the ability of communicating with other instances over a network.
* *Guaranteed Message Delivery:* a message being sent to a service will always be delivered. If the service is off-line or unreachable, the message will be either stored, or sent to an equivalent service.
* *Message Routing:* the effective recipient of a message can be chosen at runtime in function of various criteria.
* *Robustness:* forwarding messages are persisted. In case of incident, the platform can restore its state and reemit messages that were not processed.
* *Respect of standards:* Petals ESB is built with and upon standards. This is true for both the container and the component features.
* *Monitoring:* the content and the properties of the messages that transit in the bus can be monitored.
* *Extensibility:* with its component-based architecture, it is possible to extend, update and modify the platform dynamically.
* *Tools:* that may not sound like a feature for the platform, but Petals ESB is completed by several tools, including a [development environment|petalsstudio:Home], a [Web console|webconsole:Home], a [governance solution|petalsmaster:Home], a Maven plug-in, administration ANT scripts and many more. These different tools target various project actors and profiles, making it a complete suite.


h1. Software and Hardware Requirements

Petals ESB being a Java application, it is cross-platform. Thus, it is regularly used on Linux, Red Hat and Windows platforms.
As a Java application, you imperatively need a Java Virtual Machine to run it. More precisely, you need a JDK 6.
More details about Software and Hardware requirements are given in the [installation guide|System Requirements].


h1. License

Petals ESB and its components are all licensed under the terms of the [LGPL License|http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html].


h1. Where can I get the source code?

The *source code* for Petals ESB and its components can be found on [the OW2 Forge|http://forge.ow2.org/plugins/scmsvn/index.php?group_id=213].