Apache SOA vs. Mule

I'm looking for a high level technical gap analysis of the Apache ESB/SOA stack (Servicemix, Camel, ActiveMQ, CXF) vs. comparable Mule technologies.

As well, I'm trying to better understand how these frameworks are viewed amongst developers in terms of learning curve, stability, scalab开发者_C百科ility and overall ability to meet client requirements...

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It's not really an answer, but too long to be added as a comment.

Gartner does such comparisons (example), so does Forrester (example1; example2), but their papers are:

• expensive to obtain
• focusing more on the market share and the hype, less on the technical capability to deliver a solution
• mainly about commercial products - maybe because market share for open source is difficult to measure (no licenses sold)

I personally have experience with Oracle Fusion (bad), Tibco (better) and Vitria (outdated), but I'm not up to the challenge to do a detailed comparison...

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Camel uses a Java Domain Specific Language in addition to Spring XML for configuring the routing rules and providing Enterprise Integration Patterns Camel's API is smaller & cleaner (IMHO) and is closely aligned with the APIs of JBI, CXF and JMS; based around message exchanges (with in and optional out messages) which more closely maps to REST, WS, WSDL & JBI than the UMO model Mule is based on Camel allows the underlying transport details to be easily exposed (e.g. the JmsExchange, JbiExchange, HttpExchange objects expose all the underlying transport information & behaviour if its required). See How does the Camel API compare to Camel supports an implicit Type Converter in the core API to make it simpler to connect components together requiring different types of payload & headers Camel uses the Apache 2 License rather than Mule's more restrictive commercial license

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Mulesoft Anypoint is a ready to use full-stack integration platform. Apache components functionally provide similar capabilities but generally take more time to implement and support. Both allow dropping down to Spring / Java level therefore no true technical gaps in either. The choice would depend on the business goals, available budget, and the scope and number of the integration projects. Mule offers better time to market and is easier to operate, but ain't particularly cheap. Apache stack is free but developers' time (generally) is not.

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Camel is a EAI Framework and It doesn't have it's own runtime but other side Mule is full ESB product having it's own run-time. Mule has lot of connector to integrate with other system and stand itself as light weight ESB. Developers have full liberty to write own connector or invoke existing Java library to avoid rework.