Book Give Away: Open Source ESBs in Action

One Minute Bottom Line

Review

This book is split into 3 parts, and each part builds neatly on the previous one.  Clearly, anyone reading this book should be reasonably familiar with some enterprise integration patterns, but even just basic familiarity is good enough.  There is enough introductory material to familiarise any reader with the content coming up in later chapters.

Part One: Understanding ESB Functionality

If you ever wanted to know what an ESB is, what it does, when it is used, then this part does a better job in explaining this than most others that I have come across.  It was really refreshing to see a simple "Hello World" implementation as early as the first chapter.  Also, this part helps you get ready with Mule and ServiceMix and ends off with the meaty morsel of implementing message flows.

Part Two: Using ESB Core Functionalities

This part kicks off with understanding and building different kinds of messages.  The coverage is adequate and certainly does not repeat anything from the other work on enterprise integration patterns, but clearly focuses on the practical steps needed to build good messages.  We then get good coverage of connectivity options and a rather full coverage of Web Services.  My only wish was, perhaps, a bit on ReSTful services but the content in this section is enough to get anyone going who wants to implement WS-* alternatives.

Part Three: ESB Case Studies

The title of this part is slightly deceptive.  If you expected a traditional case study with a full-blown example, then you are getting a bit more than that.  There is also reasonable coverage on testing and deployment, implementing process flows and run-time monitoring.