ESB fitting in the picture

Question

Explain how does the ESB fits within the picture?

Answer 1

The Enterprise Service Bus is defined as a core element of any SOA. ESBs offer the ‘any to any’ connectivity between the services within your own company, and beyond your business in order to connect to your trading partners. However, the SOA does not stop at just implementing an ESB. Depending upon what your goals are, you may wish to use an ESB in order to connect other services within your SOA just like the interaction services, information services and business process management services. In addition, you will require considering the development services and IT service management services. The SOA reference architecture may help you lay out an SOA environment which meets your requirements and priorities. The ESB is considered as part of this reference architecture and offers the backbone of an SOA however it must not be considered an SOA by itself.