Message bus refers to a messaging architecture, shown in Figure 5.5, that enables you to connect diverse applications running on diverse computing platforms. In effect, the Fuse Mediation Router and its components constitute a message bus.
The following features of the message bus pattern are reflected in Fuse Mediation Router:
Common communication infrastructure — The router itself provides the core of the common communication infrastructure in Fuse Mediation Router. However, in contrast to some message bus architectures, Fuse Mediation Router provides a heterogeneous infrastructure: messages can be sent into the bus using a wide variety of different transports and using a wide variety of different message formats.
Adapters — Where necessary, the Fuse Mediation Router can translate message formats and propagate messages using different transports. In effect, the Fuse Mediation Router is capable of behaving like an adapter, so that external applications can hook into the message bus without refactoring their messaging protocols.
In some cases, it is also possible to integrate an adapter directly into an external application. For example, if you develop an application using Fuse Service Framework, where the service is implemented using JAX-WS and JAXB mappings, it is possible to bind a variety of different transports to the service. These transport bindings function as adapters.