MuleSource released an update to its Galaxy Enterprise SOA governance tool this week, bringing us to version 1.5. There's also a new release of its Mule Enterprise ESB, which, I should mention, is different enough from version 1.6 that the company is offering a migration tool for users, according to Software Development Times.

Here's a run-down of what's added in the new release, according to the press release:

• A scripting shell that allows Galaxy power users to write custom extensions to Galaxy;
• An event API, so that changes to services or artifacts inside Galaxy trigger an internal event, such as sending a notification or applying remote policies;
• Feeds for search results, so you can subscribe to any search using an Atom feed and monitor changes in your newsreader;
• Service metadata storage, so you can describe any type of service, including RESTful services, TCP and Java Message Service;
• Improved Atom API;
• Improved Galaxy Query Language -- supporting more sophisticated queries.

If you opt for the Galaxy 1.5 Enterprise edition, you'll get a commercial license that "relieves customers from obligations associated with GPLv2 as well as an industry-standard performance warranty by contract," according to the press release.

InfoWorld reports this version also includes support feature for those running more than one copy of Galaxy -- as in situations with federated SOA, I assume -- including remote workspaces, so users can browse other Galaxy instances and replication across Galaxy instances. The pricing starts at $7,000 per CPU per year.

There seems to be some sort of REST theme going on, because Mule 2.1 Enterprise ESB also includes additional support for REST in the form of the Mule RESTpack, which allows developers to create REST-style services. It also includes more connectors, including connectors for JDBC and IBM WebSphere, and retry policies for failed connections, according to SD Times.

In other integration news:

Information Week Tests XML Gateway SOA Appliance. Information Week is apparently targeting SOA appliances for review and this week it took a look at Vordel's XML Gateway. The publication notes it's evaluating these appliances on ease of installation and configuration, breadth of functionality, management capabilities, features and price. Overall, the reviewer seemed impressed with Vordel. I'm a little confused, however, as to whether this will be a series of reviews on SOA appliances or if this is it.

Apatar Offers Integration for SugarCRM. Apatar, an open source data integration company, now offers a connector for SugarCRM. The connector can help you connect, filter, validate and cleanse data from SugarCRM to third-party data sources, according to the press release. MySQL, Microsoft SQL, Oracle, files such as Excel and text, applications, RSS feeds and even Flickr and Amazon S3 are all supported. Apatar uses a drag-and-drop interface, so supposedly even business users can deploy the connector.