Noelios Technologies

Last year, MuleSource released RESTpack, an extension for their leading open source Mule ESB product. This pack has just been updated and now includes support for the latest Restlet 1.1 version.

The Restlet transport provides  a deep integration, both on the server and the client side, between Restlet and Mule ESB. For more information, you can read the dedicated documentation page.

We had the opportunity to talk with Dan Diephouse, the software architect and REST expert who is leading this effort.

We asked him what are the benefits that Mule RESTpack and Restlet transport bring to existing Restlet users and, more generally, how do ESB and REST fit together conceptually?

The big benefit is that you can start to build integration applications that not only utilize RESTful HTTP services, but JMS, email, BPM, etc. In addition to just hosting Restlet services in a container like fashion, you can do things like:

• Route messages to different services and transports (e.g. using URI templates to route to different JMS queues)
• Kick of other process flows when an HTTP Response is sent
• Utilize all the built in capabilities for transformations, routing, and message filtering that Mule has to offer.

If you are looking for an ESB solution with strong REST support, this is a great opportunity to leverage two mature open source technologies. We already had a report of a successful usage of Restlet with Mule ESB in a large project in France!