SOA and ESB, a bit confused.

[Claude Moore]

So guys, I've just starting diving into the charming world of SOA and I'm a bit confused about which tools / technologies are needed
for a good SOA solution.

I started studying ESB - and in particular, Mule ESB (just because there's a community edition available and
an integrated IDE I'm playing with), and at the moment all I understood is that an ESB - very roughly speaking - it's mainly focused on
message handling, enrichment, and routing.

Just because ESB is a buzzword, I thought that ESB was all one need for SOA. I'm not sure if that's true. For example, an ESB is
enough for the so famous orchestration of process ? At each step I discover thing I ignored... for example just today I found
an article about BPEL, and BPM software...

So I wonder if I'm astray (as I'm afraid to be)...
I'd like your precious help to hint me the right way, or , at least, give me some more hints to help me to understand.

[Claude Moore]

Maybe I grasped a bit what may be the key difference between ESB and BPM: the second should be considerated when
one is modeling a business scenario involving human interaction, while ESB is used when your business scenario is fully B2B..

[Aaron Shawlington]

an ESB - very roughly speaking - it's mainly focused on
message handling, enrichment, and routing.

ESB is a not particularly meaningful marketing term, but I think those things you mentioned would be an essential part, but not necessarily the main focus. I.e. they might be the main focus on what makes an ESB more than a typical enterprise app server.

[Claude Moore]

Hi Aaron,

thanks for your reply. Appserver and ESB are surely different things, the play very different roles in an IT architecture.

[Sujeeth Pakala]

In my view, SOA is just a concept with some architectural views, design principles , patterns, standards, rules and governance.

ESB compliments in building SOA landscape in integration area.