Case Study: UllaPopken

Fashion Retailer Merges Multiple JMS Servers with BizTalk Using the JNBridge JMS Adapter

Situation

Ulla Popken fashion allows all women today the opportunity to develop their own style — regardless of size. With the theme “fashion that suits me,” the Ulla Popken label presents its customers with a changing collection every month. As a multi-channel business, Ulla Popken sells in over 300 stores, by mail order and Internet, and with the help of selected franchise partners in Europe and non-European countries, and also with shop-in-shop partners.

To integrate applications, automate business processes, and improve business responsiveness and agility, Ulla Popken GmbH made a strategic decision to focus its IT development efforts on Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) applications that rely on Java Message Service (JMS). Central to the company’s IT infrastructure is Microsoft BizTalk Server, which supports enterprise application integration services, business process management, and interoperability between Java EE and .NET applications. To deploy Java EE applications that expose functionality and services via JMS messaging, IT developers needed a way to implement reliable communications with BizTalk Server.

Challenge

Within the company’s application portfolio, several core business applications required specific Java EE and JMS servers — each with its own JMS implementation. For example, the mail order system relied on IBM WebSphere. In addition, other applications used Progress SonicMQ and GlassFish (an open source application server) as the JMS provider.

Ulla Popken therefore needed a way to facilitate durable asynchronous messaging from Microsoft BizTalk Server to three different JMS implementations — WebSphere, SonicMQ, and GlassFish. “We needed a way to integrate these JMS technologies and intercommunicate with BizTalk Server,” recalled Ralf Quebbemann, Technology Consultant at Ulla Popken GmbH. Developing a solution internally seemed like an overwhelming task. “If we tried to do this ourselves, it would have been a significant development effort that would have taken months — if not years — to complete.” Looking for a solution that involved less cost and resulted in faster deployment, developers researched available Java and .NET interoperability solutions and learned about the JNBridge JMS Adapter for BizTalk Server. Since the adapter is designed to work with any JMS implementation, it was, as Quebbemann described, “perfect for our needs.”

Solution

The JNBridge JMS Adapter for BizTalk Server encapsulates JMS client capabilities into a standard BizTalk Server adapter. For each different JMS implementation that Ulla Popken employs, the adapter is configured as endpoints specifically bound to send and receive ports, allowing a BizTalk orchestration to produce and consume messages to and from JMS queues and topics.

After learning about the product, developers at Ulla Popken downloaded a trial evaluation copy of the adapter from www.jnbridge.com. They first approached the task of integrating the mail order application and configured a standard BizTalk Server adapter for IBM WebSphere. “The documentation walked us step-by-step through the process, so it was easy to get started,” said Quebbemann. Subsequently, they configured BizTalk adapters for both SonicMQ and GlassFish to integrate other enterprise applications.

Benefits

Ulla Popken experienced these benefits in using the adapter:

• Flexibility. With a single product from JNBridge, developers integrated all three JMS implementations with BizTalk and quickly solved the challenge of intercommunication.
• Simplicity, ease-of-use, and full support. Developers were able to easily configure the adapter for each JMS server. When they encountered problems that they couldn’t resolve on their own, JNBridge engineers were quick to respond.
• Fast integration. Since Ulla Popken developers selected JNBridge’s commercially available JMS Adapter for BizTalk Server, they were able to move into production rapidly, without the time and cost associated with internal development.
• Throughput and stability. In production the adapter supported solid performance and reliable messaging. “The adapter worked just as we expected,” Quebbemann remarked. “The product was very stable, provided good throughput, and delivered reliable messaging for our full spectrum of JMS applications.”

Get Started

To streamline BizTalk and JMS integration in your business and simplify Java and .NET application communication, download a free trial copy of the JNBridge JMS Adapter for BizTalk Server from www.jnbridge.com.