It was more than 2 years ago that I blogged about building a Managed File Transfer (MFT) solution using Fuse and AMQ. First, many things have progressed, particularly the technology landscape. Second, MFT protocols have evolved. AS4 provides a new and improved way of securely exchanging documents over HTTP. In addition, the OASIS consortium governs a vendor-neutral open standard. This is great news, but how do we achieve support for these new standards and transports with our antiquated, legacy, and proprietary MFT software?
The Solution
The answer is to architect your own MFT solution using JBoss Fuse, AMQ, and 3scale. The figure below depicts what this might look like:
Legacy transports like FTPS/SFTP are replaced by modern, efficient protocols like AMQP 1.0 and Protobuf. These highly optimized protocols are not only more efficient but give us metrics and visibility via the API Management platform. Or, in the case of AMQP, the AMQ Interconnect Router component (acting as a secure proxy).
But what happens if we still need to support a small bunch of legacy clients? Some clients might be unwilling (or reluctant) to upgrade to a more modern transport/protocol. If that's the case, take a look at what my colleague Joe Butler suggests in his post on the 3scale Java plugin. Using a custom Camel component, we can consume large files from clients using legacy protocols. We then run this through the 3scale API management platform, as if it were a regular API call. That will give us instant visibility of the file transfer, and additional added benefits that an API Management platform brings including:
- Security
- Key management
- Rate limiting
- Policy enforcement
- App and user management
- Provisioning
- Analytics
- App tracking
- User tracking
- Traffic alerts
- Engagement
- Developer support
Red Hat SSO is one new product that was introduced since my last post. Included with any JBoss subscription, it's a federated IAM provider for all JBoss products; making it easy to exchange SSO tokens while interfacing with your enterprise identify providers. This drastically simplifies RBAC enforcement and makes it easy to administer user credentials and role mapping via your existing IAM tool.
Where do we go from here?
The time has come to break free of your proprietary MFT solution and introduce more modern, standard-based transports and protocols. Using open source, vendor-neutral building blocks like Fuse, 3scale and AMQ, we now have a modern platform for exchanging large files with partners. We no longer have a legacy monolithic application, but a more modern agile integration solution.
Click here to download and quickly get started with Red Hat JBoss AMQ.
Last updated: September 3, 2019