What Is This ESB Thing Anyway?

An Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is a standards-based data "conduit." It facilitates transparent sharing of data across enterprise applications and the deployment of business processes in the enterprise. An ESB is messaging middleware that is built-upon, and uses widely accepted Internet-inspired standards to facilitate application, data, and process integration.

Unlike earlier integration efforts such as CORBA, COM, and Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), an ESB uses mainly Web-based standards like WS-Security, WS-Addressing, and WS-ReliableMessaging to provide security and robust messaging capabilities. An ESB is also typically platform and programming language agnostic and uses SOAP-based or common adapters like J2EE Connector Architecture (JCA) and Java Messaging Service (JMS) to interface with other applications.

ESB Is Good – But not that Good

Vendors often sell an ESB as the "business agility" component instead of as an enabling solution. ESB provides a number of key benefits because of its extensive use...