Press Release - CECID Contributed OSB Service Bus to CECID CommunityWebs

[Patrick Yee <kcyee@cecid.hku.hk>]

*CECID Contributed OSB Service Bus to CECID Community Website 
<http://www.cecid.hku.hk/pressrelease_20080204_OSBweblauched.php> *

Hong Kong SAR, Peoples Republic of China - 4 February 2008 - Center for 
E-Commerce Infrastructure Development (CECID), The University of Hong 
Kong (HKU) contributes Observatory Service Broker (OSB) to CECID 
open-source community website.

Thanks to ITF funding, the Observatory Service Broker (OSB) is one of 
the project deliverable of Project Plumber. The OSB is an enhanced 
version of a process-driven enterprise service bus, which supports a 
choreography-based business process. It is based on a published Java 
standard - Java Business Integration (JBI). JBI is a Java-based standard 
addressing the EAI and B2B issues based on the paradigms and principles 
advocated by SOA. It defines the standards for composite plug-ins in SOA 
architecture, as well as how the plug-ins can communicate with each 
other. Along with the OSB, there is a Business Process State Tracking 
(BPST) engine registering the rule sets to guide the execution of 
business processes and keep track the state of each rule set.

OSB, BPST and their source codes 
(http://community.cecid.hku.hk/index.php/product/plumber) are released 
to CECID open-source community website 
<http://community.cecid.hku.hk/index.php/> under GNU General Public 
License Version 2 
<http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html>. Later on, 
useful information and articles ranging from technical issue to general 
usage of OSB will be available at the community website. In addition, 
professional support is provided by CECID's VARs and can be requested 
through email enquiry@cecid.hku.hk <mailto:enquiry@cecid.hku.hk>.

  **

*About Project Plumber *(www.cecid.hku.hk/projectplumber.php 
<http://www.cecid.hku.hk/projectplumber.php>)
Coined Project Plumber, the project has awarded HK$ 9.2M from the HKSAR 
Government's Innovation and Technology Commission and HK$ 1.2M cash 
support from industry sponsors. Commenced on March 2006, the project 
aims to research and develop a software platform to facilitate 
enterprises to design and implement service oriented applications to 
transact with business partners based on key business-to-business (B2B) 
standards. The objectives of this project are to extend Service-Oriented 
Architecture (SOA) to support processing of electronic transactions 
between enterprises, to develop Web Service components to support 
reliable and secure B2B applications based on open standards like 
Universal Business Language (UBL), and to develop service modeling 
methodology and software to facilitate design of electronic transaction 
services. **

*About CECID *(www.cecid.hku.hk <http://www.cecid.hku.hk/index.php>)
Established in January 2002, Center for E-Commerce Infrastructure 
Development (CECID) at the University of Hong Kong conducts e-commerce 
research and development with the vision of helping organizations 
increase their competitiveness in the global economy. CECID develops 
e-commerce enabling technologies, participates in important 
international e-commerce initiatives, as well as supports e-commerce 
standardization for Hong Kong and the Asia Pacific Region. With projects 
primarily funded by the Hong Kong Government's Innovation and Technology 
Commission, CECID also takes on the mission to transfer knowledge and 
technology to the community. Besides organizing forums and seminars, the 
Center licenses its R&D results through the University of Hong Kong to 
IT industry. Its acclaimed e-commerce technology, Hermes, has penetrated 
over 80 economies and won the Best Infrastructure and Communication 
Application of the Linux Business Award 2005 as well as Certificates of 
Merit of the Asia-Pacific ICT Awards 2004 and HK Computer Society IT 
Excellence Award 2004.

*PR Contacts for Press and Analysts *
Rosanna Yip (rwyyip@cecid.hku.hk <mailto:rwyyip@cecid.hku.hk>)
Operations Manager
Center for E-Commerce Infrastructure Development (CECID)
Dept. of Computer Science
The University of Hong Kong
Tel: +852 2241 5798
Fax: +852 2547 4611
URL: www.cecid.hku.hk <http://www.cecid.hku.hk>