Is ESB suitable/really needed for building RESTful API server application?

[Apporva Singh]

We need to build a application that will expose a set of RESTful API's and hence will serve as a server for a client UI application that will consume these REST API's and will display the JSON data received from them on the UI. A request will be sent from Client UI and subsequently a REST API call will be made to server. Server application will do some processing/transformation as per the request (get the data from data store and also from another SOAP based web service) and send the response in the form of JSON object back to client.
Do we really need an ESB framework for our server application design? If yes which one will be best for this requirement. If not, then using basic Spring framework with Resteasy will suffice?

Thanks in Advance.

[Claude Moore]

ESB are mainly thought to implement a layer for data transformation and application integration, and IMO they are worth using used when you have several applications to integrate... and even in that case one should carefully evaluate pro and cons before adopting an ESB. In the scenario you described, looks like an ESB would introduce an unnecessary complexity to your project.You may use initially Spring or some Java EE appserver to expose your REST api.

[Rajit kumar]

ESB is not choice for your implementation and choose any java based REST API framework.