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Apache ODE, as in “Apache Orchestration Director Engine” (wow thats a mouthful), is a Top Level Project under the aegis of the Apache Software Foundation.

The stated objective of the ODE is “to create a reliable, compact, and embeddable component capable of managing the execution of long-running business processes defined using the BPEL process description language“, and the focus has been on “developing small modules with minimal dependencies that could be assembled (and easily reassembled) to construct a full featured BPMS“. LEGO blocks of BPMS?

The key components of the ODE architecture include the ODE BPEL Compiler, ODE BPEL Engine Runtime, ODE Data Access Objects (DAOs), ODE Integration Layers (ILs), and user tooling

Based on the contribution from Intalio to the ASF in July 2006, (originally obtained by Intalio’s acquisition of FiveSight Technologies) ODE left the incubator and took Top Level Project status on September 12 ‘07.

Already 4 projects including the Intalio|Server are using the ODE :

• Apache ServiceMix: Agile open-source ESB (JBI Container)
• Coghead: online platform to create your web-based applications.
• Intalio BPMS: a full open source BPMS solution including a BPMN designer, runtime components and tooling.
• SUPER: Integrated EU research project, aiming to raise BPM to the business level, where it belongs, from the IT level where it mostly resides now.

Built upon the ODE foundation,

“Intalio|Server is the fastest and most scalable process engine currently available on the market, capable of supporting hundreds of thousands of different process models deployed on the same server, and hundreds of millions of process instances running concurrently on a single CPU“

Sounds compelling enough to take it out for a spin.. what with Eclipse IDE support! Will keep everyone posted.