Given the economic climate, you probably aren't surprised to learn that more CIOs and even national governments are exploring open source solutions.

The word on the street – well, the BBC, actually – is that Scott McNealy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, is even preparing a paper on the subject at the request of the Obama administration. IT Business Edge's Lora Bentley wrote more about that, if you're interested.

I'll be watching to see whether the economy affects open source adoption for integration. As I shared with you last month, all those little open source issues like licensing, support, upgrades and quality of service can become more complicated when you use open source for middleware integration.

But if it's just the technology itself you're worried about, you shouldn't be, according to Tijs Rademaker, co-author of “Open Source ESBs in Action."

I recently had a chance to conduct an e-mail Q&A with Rademaker, a Java architect who lives in the Netherlands and works for Atos Origin, a large European systems integrator.

I asked Rademaker what was the most common misconception about open source ESBs and integration. He replied that many people think open source ESBs are a younger, less mature, brother of big vendor, proprietary ESBs. Based on his research, he suggested companies should definitely consider open source ESBs:

I have the privilege of being knowledgeable of both sides, and I can say that open source ESBs should be on every long list of an organization wanting to choose an ESB. Open source ESBs have a larger user base, a more active community with mailing lists and user forums, provide a lightweight approach, and make testing far more easy with the code available.

In fact, he was surprised at how large, diverse and active the open source ESB communities were.

Rademaker also shared advice for what IT organizations need to know before they begin an integration project. Be sure to check out the full interview.

In other integration news: Check out the SoaML draft. I somehow managed to miss this one, but last week the Object Management Group released a draft of the SoaML, a specification for the UML Profile and Metamodel for Services, according to this ebizQ article. For a bit of background on why this could be significant, check out my Dec. 17 blog post, “Could Modeling Language Jumpstart SOA Adoption?” You can review a .pdf of the draft online.

SOA think tank evaluates standards. Speaking of SOA standards, this week I stumbled across this new blog, written by David Sprott, founder of CBDI Forum, a think tank specializing in practices for SOA and architecture-led software delivery and management.

Sprott published his assessment of four international groups that have developed SOA standards, including the OMG's SoaML and OASIS. Much of the blog is devoted to the CBDI's contribution to SOA standards. By the way, the CBDI's Web site also contains a good amount of free information about SOA.

Salesforce integration help for Oracle Warehouse Builder. This Oracle blog post is a bit more tactical than usual, but it's short and I thought some of you might find it helpful. Basically, it tells you how to move data between your Oracle database and Salesforce.com.

Survey gives you chance to define state of SOA. Jack Vaughan, editor-in-chief of TechTarget's SOA site, is trying to define the state of SOA. The site is running a survey on the topic, which Vaughan notes will be used to drive the site's coverage of SOA in 2009. I hope they also publish the results, because I suspect a lot of people are curious about that topic.

If you complete the survey and give your name, you'll be entered in a drawing for a $100 Amazon.com gift certificate.