Enterprise Service Bus

Foreword

Integration is making a comeback—perhaps it never even left. In this book you’ll be introduced to the next generation of integration, called Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). ESB is really exciting in that it introduces battle-ready integration principles in a new way using open standards, messaging, and loosely coupled Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) principles.

The costs of using proprietary integration solutions will soon become something of the past. Integration solutions will always be required, but companies can look forward with enthusiasm knowing that upcoming solutions will be based on open standards and common integration principles, especially in the area of web services and SOA. Soon, the new game in town will be integration products competing on who best supports systemic requirements (scalability, availability, performance, etc.), and not on specific product features. Not only that, the new desire to push toward SOA forces organizations to rethink their existing environment and create architectures that are based on coarse-grained, loosely coupled, shared services. However, we all know that performing the magic of “gluing” these services together is no small task. It requires new thinking in both business and technology solutions. And, in the past, because there were virtually no integration standards and few agreed-upon repeatable integration patterns, proprietary integration products were really the only option.

Now that’s all about to change, and that is ...