We are facing a situation where an ESB (perhaps Synapse, for example) might actually be able to do something for us. We have a relationship with a local university organization who occasionally need data from us, and vice versa. Often these data feeds are recurring, so setting up something that was automated, and accessible as a web service, front-ending things like databases (perhaps federating information from more than one table) might be very useful
The question I have is related to the investment required. How much time, effort and money might be required to get things set up and getting things running. Now, having been largely lurking on this list, I have some of my own ideas, but I'd be very interested in what other folks on the list have experienced: 1) Are you using Synapse in production? [If not, thanks for reading....] 2) How many different application / data feed connections are you supporting in production? 3) How many of those are application integration connections (one application talking to another real time) 4) How many of those are data feed connections? (an application getting data out of a database, flat files, XML, and so forth) 5) What does your infrastructure look like: hardware, software components in addition to Synapse? 6) How long (elapsed) did it take you to get your first connection operational? 7) How much effort (person-hours) did it take to get your first connection operational, including "ramp up" time on Synapse itself? 8) What has been your biggest struggle? If enough folks are interested, I would consider putting these questions (and perhaps others suggested by others) up on something akin to Survey Monkey and send out a link, and report back to the list. (PS: No, I am not selling anything. 8^) I work for a government agency that has had some interest in an ESB, but haven't done anything yet).
