Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

An Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is a software architecture model used for designing and implementing the interaction and communication between mutually interacting software applications in a [[Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)]].

It functions as a core infrastructure that provides a set of rules and principles for integrating numerous applications over a bus-like infrastructure. ESB enables enterprises to integrate different applications by putting a communication bus between them and then enabling each application to talk to the bus.

ESB facilitates the integration of various enterprise applications and services by providing a centralized, flexible, and scalable communication backbone. It routes messages between services, transforming and translating these messages as necessary so that they can be understood by the receiving services.

By acting as an intermediary layer, ESB allows different systems to communicate without being directly connected, thereby decoupling systems and allowing them to evolve independently. ESB can modify or enrich the data within the message payloads, transforming them into formats that are consumable by different recipient systems.

It supports various communication protocols and can convert messages from one protocol to another, enabling interoperability among disparate systems. ESB often includes a range of adapters that allow it to connect to different types of systems, such as databases, web services, message queues, and more.

It offers error handling mechanisms and monitors data flows, ensuring message delivery and system health. ESB supports [[Load Balancer|load balancing]] and provides failover mechanisms to ensure high availability and reliability. ESBs can orchestrate complex business processes by coordinating interactions between different backend systems and services.

Security features such as authentication, authorization, and encryption can be managed centrally in the ESB.