Progress Software has detailed its forthcoming roadmap of releases

Progress Software has fleshed out its roadmap, promising the next release of its Sonic ESB 8.0 – due by the year-end – will propel event-driven architecture into the enterprise mainstream.

The next point release of Sonic ESB 7.6 will be released shortly with added usability enhancements and new integration capabilities, he confirmed, with ESB 8.0 pencilled in for a release later in 2008.

EDA has been hotly debated over recent years, but the underpinning technology has not been adequately robust, said Hub Vandervoort, chief technology officer for Progress Software: "Although the event driven fabric concept has always been integral to the Sonic products, the world wasn’t ready for it before now."

In an EDA, applications automatically respond conditions as they occur and are not locked into predefined sequences of actions. This should enable the IT infrastructure to be responsive to subtle changes in the business landscape.

According to analyst group IDC, EDA is dependent on five key technologies: message-oriented middleware; complex-event-processing engines; active data integration; asynchronous adapters; and data cache.

Only Progress and Oracle have mature products in all five areas, IDC noted.