How JiTGate engine will take advantage of the Azure of Things to provide a very simple way to integrate things

The BizTalk Summit in London is gone and after some critical weeks I’m finally able to be back on the battlefield.

What about the news, in the first is about the project I presented in London, the name is JiTGate (Just in Time Gate), what the idea is?
JiTGate is a light framework to integrate things in very fast and easy way, I started the project six months ago and I’m still in the development phase.
After the BizTalk NoS Add-in I made the decision to do something to make easier for me integrate things.
As many of you, I used a lot of different technologies to solve my integration problems, FILE, ASMX, WCF, BizTalk, .Net, Java, SSIS, Microsoft Azure , Google Cloud, Amazon AWS, MQ Rabbit, Tibco and more.
The evolution of the integration is quite curious, we passed across a lot of different patternsSlide10

I remember, years ago we used file and then ASP, just sending HTTP Post, who is able to remember Transaction Server?, if you remember that, this meaning you are a quite old integrator Smile but, I think you also have a very deep vision about the integration Smile.
After ASMX we had the adapter (BizTalk Server) and later we extend the vision of contract and metadata with WCF, with REST we started to understand that using a Convention Over Configuration we were able to drive our services, later, the large amount of methods drove us to create representation as Swagger and pattern Web API.

I think that, following my personal evolution we can understand a lot of things, 20 years ago I was a quite more beautiful, happy, blond and with blue eyes, with BizTalk Server I started a metamorphosys and all people started to call me the BizTalk Grinch.

Now the situation in going more complex that before, in last three years I saw so many new things that I’m not able to decide what is better than another.

Slide10Now you also know the meaning of my picture blog Smile

A lot of new terms and visions, MicroServices, On Premise, Exagonal, Poligonal, and who remember Quadrant?, but what is really curious is one thing, do you know what is the most integration pattern normally used inside the customer?

Slide13

Yes, the File, and I start thinking about why the companies are still using this mechanism to integrate systems, I think because the File is the most known and simple thing.
It is also simple to manage, fast to use, it is polymorphic, you can adapt a file to contain everything you want and , of course, it it serializable and more…

Slide18

I’m not telling you that the file is the best way to integrate but, honestly, this is what I would like to see in an Integration Framework, I would like a framework simple to use, fast to manage and first of all, full extensible.
Well, during the last MVP Summit I realized that now Microsoft Azure contains a lot of new things to use and many of them are able to work together in very easy way.
I started to imagine many different combinations for use them, and I started to change my vision of Azure from flat way, as below.

Slide19.

To a more complex vision as below.

Slide20

this because Azure of Things, I like to say that the power of Azure if proportional to the number of Azure things we are able to use together.

JiTGate is an engine which able to use all of these things together and provide a very simple way to integrate things.

BizTalk London Summit 2015 Nino

The engine is quite complex in favour of the usability that is very simple, I shown some demos during the BizTalk Summit and the feedbacks was really good.
JiTGate is based on a complex Event Propagation pattern which uses Triggers and Events and internally it uses a complex mechanism to manage the relationship between all of them.

It is multi transport protocol and opened for all the publishing scenarios, it uses technology as Event Hubs, for this reason is able to scale in very high level.

Slide26

An automatic synchronization mechanism is able to provide a very easy deployment mechanism, the configuration uses Json file so it is very simple to extend for other tools or existing UI as Visual Studio or Windows Explorer.

Slide27

Create a trigger or event is really fast and I can do this using different languages as C# or PowerShell, I liked the idea to provide something good for the admin,create a trigger using PowerShell is very simple and without any particular strong development experience and without compile code, I think this is a good thing for administrator, I created a trigger which is able to get events from the event viewer in just ten minutes (thanks to my dear friend Sandro Pereira  for the PowerShell script Open-mouthed smile ).

Slide28

Internal it use a rule engine based on Roslyn, this meaning that I’m able to create my rules directly using .Net and this is quite cool for me and the log system is totally dynamic, it is able to be extended using Stream Analytic or any other log system.

Slide29

 

The usability is simple, download , unpack and run, the version will be as NT Service, executable, Worker Role and DLL Package, I’m also thinking to provide the package for Docker, in this way I will be able to use JiTGate in all the operating systems, Unix, Linux and more…

BizTalk London Summit 2015 Nino

The provision is totally automatic, the trigger or event could be created using C# or PowerShell, I just need to copy it in a folder and if, I mark it as shared, a synchronization engine will provide the same event to  all the JiTPoints in the same group, the configuration is totaly Json based and I can use all tools I want to manage it, I also want to create the VSX package extension but I prefer to think about a VSX library package extension, so the developers will be able to extend it as they want.

Slide31

Logically the trigger activation is multi pattern, I’m able to fire a Trigger using a REST call and I’m creating a Convention Over Configuration to drive the triggers and events by REST, I tried to do that with BizTalk Server, years ago, but in this case the code is mine and I can do all I want in detail.
I can start a trigger using any scheduler system I want or in single instance to create, for example, a REST or HTTP point , in polling way as, for example the BizTalk File adapter  or SQL sever adapter, but I was also happy to provide the Event Handling patter, for me is very useful in case, for example, receive notification from external stream systems as event viewer, RFID and devices.
JiTGate is able to execute events everywhere and in cascade too.

Slide32

I’m completing some of the most important features and I would like to present some  new interesting things during the Belgian BizTalk User Group Integration Day 2015 , I’m sure I will have the opportunity to discuss with a lot of integration experts and to gather a lot of useful feedbacks.

I’m also happy to receive any technical contribution or advice Smile.

Related blog posts