Mule ESB Development Goes Visual

July 10, 2012 Alex Woodie

MuleSoft recently announced a new release of Mule ESB, its Java-based, open source enterprise service bus (ESB) that’s available in a free community edition and a for-fee enterprise edition. With the launch of Mule ESB 3.3, the enterprise edition gains a new capability called DataMapper that’s designed to allow users to create transformation and process flows in a visual, drag-and-drop environment.

Mule ESB Community is a freely downloadable ESB framework designed to manage and orchestrate the flow of data across multiple applications, protocols, and transportation mechanisms. The software is primarily designed for organizations that have somewhat complex application integration challenges, such as connecting three or more applications across two or more types of communication protocols. The company also touts the software’s capability to expose legacy systems, including IBM i applications, for the purpose of modernizing application communication using a services oriented architecture (SOA) approach.

With the launch of Mule 3.3, MuleSoft has added several new features to the Mule ESB Enterprise edition, including a new graphical data mapping capability in the Mule Studio called DataMapper that’s designed to make it easier to connect applications and data with the product. (While the Mule Studio is available in the free community edition, only Mule ESB Enterprise has the new DataMapper feature.)

MuleSoft says DataMapper allows users to visually construct data transformations and embed them directly into their Mule integration flows. DataMapper supports XML, JSON, CSV and POJOs, and offers native support for application data standards like HL7, SAP, Salesforce.com, Netsuite, and Excel. DataMapper “dramatically simplifies” the development, testing and maintenance of data integration and transformation tasks within Mule ESB, the company says.

Other enhancements in Mule ESB Enterprise 3.3 that will please developers include better integration with Maven, Git, and Subversion lifecycle management tools, and one-click publishing to the Mule Enterprise Repository. System administrators will appreciate the runtime enhancements in Mule ESB 3.3, including a new in-memory grid technology that should boost performance, scalability, and high availability, the company says.

MuleSoft says more than 100,000 developers use the Mule ESB, while more than 3,200 companies are using Mule ESB in production. Organizations licensing the community edition get the core ESB functionality, while the enterprise edition adds features such as: support for WebSphere MQ and “premium” JDBC; directory integration; role-based access control; compliance; high availability; performance management features; operational management features; problem resolution; and 24/7 professional support.