Enterprise Service Bus is a good first book to introduce yourself to the concepts behind this technology. David Chappell is a very clear writer and has a deep grasp of the technology, so concepts are introduced and explained in a clear and understandable manner.



I found the first chapter of this book to be more sales job than it needed to be. The author takes the worst case scenarios of integration nightmares that plague very large organizations and uses that as justification for ESB. And while this may be true, ESB is made out to be the Deus Ex Machina of the integration problem. It's not, I'm afraid. Technology was never the problem - haphazard development by overworked or disinterested programmers is.



Passing over this flaw, the book really starts in Chapter 3 where the meat of the subject matter is exposed and made clear. Chappell does a superb job of simplifying the basics of ESB, starting with the simple concepts and building upon them with more detailed information in later chapters.



By chapter 9, the concepts are thoroughly explained. The remaining chapters just add more information (and some confusion) into the mix, outlining work that was in progress at the time of writing (2003/2004).



If you can skim through the sales pitches and see them for what they are, this is a very good book to gaining understanding of the basics of the Enterprise Service Bus technology. ( )