What ESB to use?

Question

We're considering a ESB infrastructure; when would you consider open source products like mule and when packages like TIBCO, BIZTALK< ORalce Fusion?

Answer 1

Cost and support are the obvious two distinguishing features.

If you have no money to pay for licenses, then open source is a good alternative.

If you don't like open source because of managerial objections, then you'll go with a licensed product.

With open source, you want to be sure that you're getting something that has some longevity to it. The signs are vibrant developer and user communities, easy access to forum support, periodic updates to the software, standards-based with alternatives available, etc. You don't want to make a choice for something as fundamental as infrastructure and regret it a year later because the open source project has fallen apart.

ESBs can play a lot of roles:

1. gateway for B2B with external parties
2. messaging between services
3. transformation between formats (EDI, XML, etc.)
4. orchestration of services
5. centralization of cross-cutting concerns like auditing, logging, metrics, etc.

You'll want to make a careful decision to meet all these needs.

Answer 2

I know nothing of their product, but Loose coupling versus decoupling ... briefly discusses an important point often missed, and one that can bite you very hard later on.

I worry that BizTalk is being taken over by the .Net types within Microsoft, and may be headed in the direction of the closely-bound interfaces of WCF. Read a lot, ask a lot of questions. Don't expect much of open source offerings.