ESB Implementation & Services Extraction and Utilization
An Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) generally provides an abstraction layer on top of an implementation of an enterprise messaging system, which allows integration architects to exploit the value of messaging without writing code. An ESB does not implement a service-oriented architecture (SOA) but provides the features with which one may be implemented. Although it is a common belief, an ESB is not necessarily web-services based. An ESB should be standards-based and flexible, supporting many transport mediums. Based on EAI rather than SOA patterns, it tries to remove the coupling between the service called and the transport medium.
Aligning the IT architecture to SOA has several benefits; however these benefits come with a cost that is often too prohibitive. Yet, at HCL we can reduce the costs and even amortize it over the engagement period, often, as part of regular application develop. The key approach we take is this:
- ESB can be federated thus making the introduction gradual
- ESB can start with simpler goals such as data integration and transformation
- It is possible to start with ESB lite, a cheaper version providing most of the benefits
Our Middleware and SOA Group has several other best practices culled from our experiences at several clients to make ESB based SOA work for any organization.
