Customer Reviews

Open-Source ESBs in Action: Example Implementations in Mule and ServiceMix

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book has helped me a great deal in selecting which ESB we should use. The intro sections are excellent for this purpose. The examples are mostly in mule and servicemix but a number of other ESBs are covered in both summary form and in examples that proves to be highly valuable when formulating your selection.

The other related plus point is that the authors provide you with a view into the roadmap of the ESBs (especially ServiceMix and Mule) so that you can see where they are going in the current beta releases. In a dynamic opensource base this is essential since things change so quickly and books become quickly out of date. The website also has useful material.

The same examples are given in mule and servicemix throughout the chapters and this helps you to think about how best you would use the technology and you can formulate conclusions like "AHAH...Mule requires me to import less ESB classes and stay decoupled from the ESB better", or "Servicemix requires less code to do this type of routing".

The source code for the examples is provided via a website complete with junit code and ant files to run them. This is excellent since it proves really easy to get some handson experience and (for example) see the differences in startup times and hotdeployment capabilities between the ESBs.

The other rather innovative addition is that it lets you download the ebook for free using a codewheel in the book. This proves useful for referencing material and answering those "what was the page that talked about X" questions you have while reading the book.

I hate to give a book 5 out of 5 but this is really very good for those just getting into ESBs and especially for people trying to decide which ESB to use.

While this book may be good for comparison purposes ( Mule vs. Service Mix ) it is almost impossible to run the examples unless you have a great deal of time to search through the vast amount of posts on an Author site. The authors do not answer posts ( or if they do it is not timely ) so getting help is near impossible. They do not explain the mule and service mix implementation well enough to overcome the class paths issues, broken configuration files scripts that do not work etc. If you request help, good luck. The content describing mule and JBI are not bad, but I was in search of a book that could provide usable examples and provide a vehicle to use the service endpoints that Service Mix and Mule provide. Rather than experiment with these available components I spent a vast majority of the time trying to get the system configured to run the examples. I only got through Chapter 4 and have beat my head against the wall enough to know when time spent is not productive.

Don't waste your time with this mess. If I could've given it zero stars I would have.

ServiceMix is many releases ahead of the one used in this book. The sample examples DONT WORK, even on the intended version of ServiceMix. The authors waste a lot of time on things like "Why choose an ESB?", "The Architecture of ESB's", "Case studies" etc. Half the book goes to this junk. Then split the remainder in half if you are looking to get hands on with ServiceMix or Mule. You're wasting your money and time to get 1/4 of a useful book.

You're better off going to the ServiceMix site at either Apache or Fuse and downloading their docs and examples.

Good Book but split between Mule and Service Mix does reduce its usefulness if you are just using one or the other. Good if you are evaluating one vs the other. Good examples and illustrations which I find very useful.

A good book. + I got the pdf version free.. So in case you are planning to buy only PDF version, you can put few bucks extra and get hard copy and soft copy too. I particularly wanted this for Mule.
*** However for mule I feel the mule source documentation and user guide (on mulesource.org) is also quite well (if u have read EAI book by Harpe and Woolf).. especially if you try out the examples on your own.

Very easy order process, immediate response on receipt of order, immediate response on ship that day, received in short time with delivery estimates beaten.

In all a clean, concise, fast experience!