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Xml Appliance




An XML appliance is a separate Computer System with deliberately narrow functionality that exchanges XML messages with other computer systems. XML appliances are designed specifically to be easy to Install , configure and manage. XML appliances frequently include specialized hardware and software to accelerate the processing of XML messages.


HISTORY OF XML APPLIANCES

The first XML appliances were created by engineers that required a large volume of XML Transformation s. They created specialized Application-specific Integrated Circuit s that performed transformations up to 100 times faster than software-only solutions. Although there were some early adopters of these systems, it was initially restricted to large e-commerce sites such as Yahoo! and Amazon . Early entrants to this field include vendors such as DataPower (now owned by IBM ) and Sarvega (now owned by Intel ).

A second round of XML appliances started to appear around 2003 , when these devices were used to exchange SOAP XML messages between computers on public networks. These messages required advanced security features such as Encryption , Digital Signatures and Denial Of Service Attack prevention. Because the setup and configuration of software-only systems was time consuming, companies could save a great deal of money by using appliances that were pre-packaged with WS-Security standards built in.


COMMON FEATURES OF XML APPLIANCES


  • They make assumptions that most messages that enter or exit the appliance are well-formed XML files

  • They have customized hardware and software that is optimized to make parsing and analysis of XML files efficient. The DataPower XG4 XML chipset and the Tarari RAX-XSLT chipset are examples of such hardware.

  • They have custom software to make the appliances easy to install, configure and manage

  • They have built-in support for many XML standards such as XSLT , XPath , SOAP and WS-Security



CLASSIFICATION OF XML APPLIANCES

Although the term XML appliance is the most general term to describe these devices, most vendors use alternative terminology that describe more specific functionality of these devices. The following are alternative names used for XML Appliances:

  • XML accelerators - are devices that typically use custom hardware to accelerate XPath processing. This hardware typically provides a performance boost between 10 and 100 times in the number of messages per second that can be processed.

  • Integration Appliance - (also known as application routers) are devices that are designed to make the integration of computer systems easier.

  • XML Firewall - (also known as XML security gateways) are devices that support the WS-Security standards. These appliances typically offload encryption and decryption to specialized hardware devises.



XML APPLIANCE VENDORS



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