#1 most frequent
United States of America
62.9%541 installations of 860
What is Mule ESB?
Mule ESB, from Mulesoft, is an open source middleware solution.
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Who Buys & Uses Mule ESB
#2 most frequent
India
9.5%82 installations of 860
#3 most frequent
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
4.2%36 installations of 860
Best Integration tool
Pros
- It is best suited for Rest API development. Mule ESB uses RAML as an API descriptor which is less complex and easy to understand. RAML is an open standard majorly supported by Mulesoft. Once RAML is developed, it is very easy (a few clicks)to create flows corresponding to the resources defined in the RAML. One can also include JSON schema validation in RAML, and with the use of APIkit router, Mule ESB makes the request validation very easy (it's automatic basically.)
- Mule ESB comes with a large spectrum of community and enterprise connectors. We have connectors for all the major platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Salesforce, SAP, etc. This enables Mule ESB to integrate with the other systems in a faster and more robust way. Mule ESB has many components to fulfill the requirements of each integration (for example batch processing, parallel processing, choice, etc.)
- Mule API gateway is one of the best tools (modules) of Mulesoft's offering. It supports API governance and management very well. One can easily enforce policies on their APIs with API gateway. It enables some of the must-have features in an API solution (i.e. throttling, oAuth, access levels, etc.)
- Implementing a CI/CD (DevOps) environment for Mule ESB is a very easy task. Mule majorly uses MAVEN as its build tool, which in turn makes it best suitable for CI/CD approach. Mule also provides MAVEN plugins for auto deployments to the servers. Mule also has a best Unit testing module which is MUnit. MUnit can be used for both Unit and Functional testing, and it is easy to write and generates coverage reports in various formats.
Cons
- Anypoint Studio is the primary IDE to do the Mule ESB development. Although Anypoint Studio is a good tool, and makes the life of a developer very easy with its drag and drop features, it seems too slow at times. Running a slightly large application on the local machine is a bit of a pain because of the slowness of the IDE.
- I personally feel the Database connector which Mule ESB provides is not very easy to use. It does not fetch metadata from the database, which complicates the mapping. Calling a stored procedure from Mule ESB is a very hectic task because one haa to write DTO classes for complex data types.
- Documentation provided by Mulesoft doesn't seem complete and sufficient. Sometimes it's very hard understand the configuration of a particular component because most of the documentation doesn't have detailed description.
Return on Investment
- All the Mulesoft API stack offering as worth of money. They have tools to support all the phases of API life cycle. And the best part is most of the essential tools comes with basic license.
- Mule ESB is best suited for the organizations which are trying to implement agile methodology. It is also best suited for DevOps environments.
- Choosing Mule ESB turns out to be a best decisions for most of our clients and it fulfilled their expectations in a best way.
Alternatives Considered
Dell Boomi API Management and Oracle SOA Suite
Other Software Used
SoapUI NG Pro, Ionic Security, AWS Config
Mule ESB: Great tool for complex integrations
Pros
- As an ESB it provides great flexibility to add/remove systems in the integration easily. Highly scalable.
- Supports any kind of system to be integrated, Supports Java.
- Lightweight.
Cons
- Experienced resources will be required to build complex integrations.
- It's not perfect to be used as ETL. There are other ETLs in the market which offer better features overall but when it comes to ESB features, Mule is much better.
Return on Investment
- Overall a great tool for complex integrations
Mule comes with API and ESB
Pros
- Considering all other ESBs in the market, it is very light weight and easy to develop.
- Performance is very fast as everything is Rest. That's the reason Netflix and Amazon are using this ESB.
- All the complex transformation can be done with the help of Dataweave. It is built on top of Scala and lambda.
Cons
- Logging the Database query in production with out changing the log4j level
Return on Investment
- Definitely - it is a positive ROI for long term purposes
- It is going to rule the Bay area and NYC for the next 10 years.
Alternatives Considered
Apache Camel
Other Software Used
Salesforce.com, Pega 7 Platform
Affordable and easy to build solutions with, Mule really packs on the functionality.
Pros
- Extracting order and invoice data from our Infor ERP and related Oracle-based repositories, Mule then pipes it into Salesforce, enabling us to gain a 360-degree view of the customer order life-cycle.
- We have a very complex pricing tool written in a .net application that is very difficult to get information extracted from for analytics. With Mule, we can easily pull the data out and load it into a repository for our BI tools to go after.
- Mule lets us connect our legacy CRM system (built on .net) easily to both Salesforce and our Data Warehouse for faster analytics and access to historical customer interactions. Additionally, since our Salesforce instance it new, it aids in the roll-on of new OEM partners and loading of their historical data.
Cons
- As with any system, setting up secure agents and firewall permissions was a bit of a challenge. We ran into a few SSL and certificate roadblocks that required some extra follow through with out networking staff. I think an easier plug-and-play approach with more documentation would have helped, but since Mule is newish, I assume documentation will simply improve over time.
- Lack of decent in-person training was a challenge early on, but we created our own competency internally to resolve that so haven’t had to look outside for over a year now. Recommend any newcomers follow the same path, and ensure you have redundancy in case an important resource departs.
- Pricing could be a little better, there are other options (Red Hat, etc.) and I feel like the price is only what it is because it has the Salesforce brand behind it.
Return on Investment
- It’s all been positive from an ROI perspective for us, having the competency in-house has cut down on outsourcing expenses.
- Mule has allowed us to sunset a major ETL tool we were using for migrations to the cloud, saving us more in annual license costs than the cost of Mule itself.
- Adding Mule has allowed us to reconfigure several internal departments combining them into one, resulting in fewer headcount able to accomplish more. As we lose people through attrition, we realize we can leverage Mule to automate and absorb some of their functions.
Alternatives Considered
Jitterbit, TIBCO Cloud Integration (including BusinessWorks and Scribe), Informatica Enterprise Data Integration, Informatica Cloud and Oracle API Platform Cloud
Other Software Used
Jitterbit, Oracle API Platform Cloud, TIBCO Cloud Integration (including BusinessWorks and Scribe), TIBCO Data Virtualization, IBM API Management, IBM API Connect
Mule - a great ESB for the Enterprise
Pros
- Connectors allow for easy integration
- Design of services allows for reuse
- Great support community available
- Services may be deployed to the Cloud
Cons
- Make sure to not over-engineer shared components. It can complicate development
- Create a roadmap for where you are going - if not, you may miss components
- I suggest getting support, otherwise it could be a difficult learning curve
Return on Investment
- Created a means to have a synergy with developers - quickly made us productive
- Ease of integration with Mule connectors - quicker releases
- Initial configuration was a challenge. Would have been more challenging without Mule Support
Alternatives Considered
TIBCO BusinessConnect
Other Software Used
Rocket Aldon, Toad for Oracle, Snagit
