No such thing as a centralized ESB

Via David McGhee's Q&A with Dr. Don Ferguson, but read the whole thing.

Q: Could you tell you your thoughts or preference for a distributed or centralized ESB?

DON: there is no such thing as a centralized ESB.

This is the problem with a lot of the products that call themselves ESBs. They are centralized brokers which may be clustered for availability. But they are in no way an implementation of the Bus Architectural Pattern. Please check this before cutting a check to your vendor.

Also, understand that if you do security related things in your ESB, possibly as a part of your routing rules, that if the security infrastructure is centralized that means your ESB is too. Even if it really was distributed to begin with.

Buyer beware.

Posted by Udi Dahan at 04:16 AM  Permalink