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
