DZone
Thanks for visiting DZone today,
Edit Profile
  • Manage Email Subscriptions
  • How to Post to DZone
  • Article Submission Guidelines
Sign Out View Profile
  • Post an Article
  • Manage My Drafts
Over 2 million developers have joined DZone.
Log In / Join
Refcards Trend Reports Events Over 2 million developers have joined DZone. Join Today! Thanks for visiting DZone today,
Edit Profile Manage Email Subscriptions Moderation Admin Console How to Post to DZone Article Submission Guidelines
View Profile
Sign Out
Refcards
Trend Reports
Events
Zones
Culture and Methodologies Agile Career Development Methodologies Team Management
Data Engineering AI/ML Big Data Data Databases IoT
Software Design and Architecture Cloud Architecture Containers Integration Microservices Performance Security
Coding Frameworks Java JavaScript Languages Tools
Testing, Deployment, and Maintenance Deployment DevOps and CI/CD Maintenance Monitoring and Observability Testing, Tools, and Frameworks
Culture and Methodologies
Agile Career Development Methodologies Team Management
Data Engineering
AI/ML Big Data Data Databases IoT
Software Design and Architecture
Cloud Architecture Containers Integration Microservices Performance Security
Coding
Frameworks Java JavaScript Languages Tools
Testing, Deployment, and Maintenance
Deployment DevOps and CI/CD Maintenance Monitoring and Observability Testing, Tools, and Frameworks
What's in store for DevOps in 2023? Hear from the experts in our "DZone 2023 Preview: DevOps Edition" on Fri, Jan 27!
Save your seat
  1. DZone
  2. Testing, Deployment, and Maintenance
  3. Deployment
  4. Making Integration Great Again

Making Integration Great Again

Integration has not seen such a programming language innovation related to itself for a long time. That's what the Ballerina programming language is trying to change.

Chanaka Fernando user avatar by
Chanaka Fernando
CORE ·
Feb. 22, 17 · News
Like (3)
Save
Tweet
Share
6.21K Views

Join the DZone community and get the full member experience.

Join For Free

Let's talk directly about how we can make integration great again. It has been a while since we experienced a major innovation in the general purpose programming language landscape. Integration has not seen such a programming language innovation related to itself for a long time.

WSO2, a software company which makes enterprise middleware products unveiled the latest innovation in the integration space with its brand new programming language called Ballerina. Here are the slides presented by Sanjiva Weerawarana, the CEO and Chief Architect at WSO2.

I have been privileged to work in the core development team at WSO2 and take part in this innovative programming language. With this post, I'm trying to share my experience and knowledge of the purpose of this new language and what it can do.

Ballerina is a programming language for all. It is for geeks who like to write scripts for everything they do, for architects who barely speak without diagrams, for marketing folks who have no idea what programming is, and for so-called programmers who cracks any kind of programming language you throw at them. Simply put, it is a programming language with visual and textual representation. You can try out live samples at ballerinalang website.

Programming language inventions are not something we see so often. The reason is that when people are happy with a language and get used to it, they are reluctant to move from that ecosystem. Unless it is super awesome and can’t live without it, they prefer holding their position. This is even harder for general purpose programming languages than Domain Specific Languages (DSLs).

Integration of systems has been a tedious task from the beginning and nothing much has changed — even today. While working with our customers, we identified that there is a gap in the integration space where programmers and architects speak in different languages. Sometimes, this resulted in huge losses of time and money. Integration has a lot to do with diagrams. Top-level people always prefer diagrams rather than code, but programmers are the other way around. We thought of filling this gap with a more modernized programming language. That was our starting point.

Once we started the development and while doing the design of this programming language, we identified that there are so many cool features spread across different programming languages, but there is no one programming language with all the cool features. Then, we made design changes to make Ballerina a more general purpose language than a DSL.

Today, we are happy to announce Ballerina. Here are the main features of the language in a short list.

  • Textual, visual, and swagger representations of your code.

  • Parallel programming made easier with workers and fork-join.

  • XML, JSON, and DataTable as built-in data types for easier data handling.

  • Packaging and module system to write, share, and distribute code in an elegant fashion.

  • Composer (editor) makes it easier to write programs in a more visual manner.

  • Built-in debugger and test framework (testerina) makes it easier to develop and test.

Integration

Opinions expressed by DZone contributors are their own.

Popular on DZone

  • Choosing the Best Cloud Provider for Hosting DevOps Tools
  • How Do the Docker Client and Docker Servers Work?
  • Key Considerations When Implementing Virtual Kubernetes Clusters
  • Simulate Network Latency and Packet Drop In Linux

Comments

Partner Resources

X

ABOUT US

  • About DZone
  • Send feedback
  • Careers
  • Sitemap

ADVERTISE

  • Advertise with DZone

CONTRIBUTE ON DZONE

  • Article Submission Guidelines
  • Become a Contributor
  • Visit the Writers' Zone

LEGAL

  • Terms of Service
  • Privacy Policy

CONTACT US

  • 600 Park Offices Drive
  • Suite 300
  • Durham, NC 27709
  • support@dzone.com
  • +1 (919) 678-0300

Let's be friends: