Mule 2: A Developer's Guide

Chapter 1. Fundamental Mule

This chapter covers the fundamental concepts within Mule, from the definition of an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) to how you can configure fundamental elements inside Mule to produce a working application.

The Enterprise Service Bus

An Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), sometimes referred to as "messaging middleware," is nothing more than a platform that can carry data between different, disparate applications. Data is carried to and from a series of stops, known as "endpoints," which must be defined for each application. The internals of an ESB contain routing mechanisms that know how to direct specific data from point A to point B.

As you can see from the diagram in Figure 1-1, the ESB is a logical channel that spans your ...