Glossary

A library of key terminology and descriptions to help you familiarize yourself with industry terms.

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

A

Access Control: In computer security, access control is the management of access to interfaces and network resources. It grants authenticated users access and specific privileges to systems, resources, or information based on user credentials.
Anypoint API Manager: Part of the greater Anypoint Platform for APIs, API Manager helps manager SLAs, users, and traffic, monitor performance, and easily creates contracts and policies. The built-in API Gateway connects to any backend service or data source.
Anypoint Connector DevKit: Anypoint Connector DevKit provides the tools and interfaces for building custom Anypoint Connectors for use with Mule ESB and CloudHub. As reusable components that hide API complexity from the integration developer, custom connectors facilitate integration with SaaS and on-premises web services, applications, and data sources.
Anypoint Connectors: Anypoint Connectors facilitate integration of your MuleSoft applications with any external resource, such as third-party APIs or standard integration protocols. They enable connectivity to SaaS and on-premises applications, systems, and services quickly and can be managed on-premises or in the cloud.
Anypoint Platform: The only complete platform for SOA, SaaS integration, and APIs, Anypoint Platform allows you to design, build, and manage your entire integration strategy in one place.
Anypoint Platform for APIs: Easily build APIs and design new interfaces for existing APIs while interacting with your internal developer community at each step. Anypoint Platform for APIs enables you to more efficiently run and manage your APIs.
Anypoint Platform for SaaS: A 100% cloud platform that makes it simple for companies to build, run, and manage integrations between SaaS applications and the enterprise, Anypoint Platform for SaaS enables connectivity both in the cloud and on-premises.
Anypoint Platform for SOA: Connect on-premises applications to each other and to the cloud withAnypoint Platform for SOA. The platform allows you to deliver projects faster, deploy in weeks, and assemble secure and reliable integrations.
Anypoint Studio: An Eclipse-based graphical design environment for Anypoint Platform, Anypoint Studio offers two development environments to create applications, a Visual Editor and a XML Editor, to help accelerate developer productivity.
Anypoint Templates: Built to be configured, customized, extended, and reused, Anypoint Templates are built to take on the most common integration challenges.
API: See application programming interface
API First: An API first approach focuses on designing APIs to deliver business. With API first design, businesses create an application programming interface optimized for adoption. Once finalized, they use a platform to rapidly implement it by connecting it to backend services.
API Gateway: The API Gateway points to backend APIs and services and abstracts them in a layer that can be managed by the API Manager agent. Consumer applications that invoke your services and APIs are routed to the endpoints exposed by the gateway, enforcing runtime policies while collecting and tracking analytics data. API Gateway separates management from implementation concerns for all your backend services and APIs. It also allows you to take advantage of the governance capabilities of the Anypoint Platform for APIs, such as applying policies, enforcing security, and managing contracts.
API Management: The process of publishing, promoting, and managing APIs in a secure, reliable environment. Effective API Management includes creating support resources that define the API for end users.
Application Programming Interface: Application Programming Interface (API) is source code based specifications used as interfaces by software components to communicate with each other. The set of functionalities defined are independent of their respective implementation, allowing both definition and implementation to vary without compromising each other.
Application Orchestration: Application or service orchestration is the process of integrating two or more applications and/or services together to automate a process or synchronize data in real-time. Application orchestration provides three key benefits: an approach to integration that decouples applications from each other; capabilities for message routing, security, transformation and reliability; and a way to manage and monitor your integrations centrally.

B

Back Office: A back office application is software used for administrative operations and is not visible to consumers. Connecting the back office, refers to integrating applications, systems and services such as ERP and CRM systems with sales and consumer facing applications.
Batch Job: A computer program or set of programs processed in batch mode. A sequence of commands to be executed by the operating system is listed in a file and submitted for execution.
Batch Processing: The execution of a series of programs without manual intervention.
BAPI: Business Application Programming Interface (BAPI) is an object-oriented programming interface of SAP that provides business application systems data and facilitates integration of these components.
Business Process Management: Business Process Management (BPM) is a system which automates business processes. Typically, a BPM system has a graphical interface which allows you to model your business processes visually.

C

Cloud Integration: Cloud Integration allows for applications to connect with and share data with one another in the cloud.
Cloud-to-cloud: Cloud-to-cloud is the process of configuring application programs to share data in the cloud.
CloudHub: CloudHub is the platform as a service (PaaS) component of Anypoint Platform
CloudHub Fabric: CloudHub Fabric provides scalability, workload distribution, zero message loss, and failover capabilities to CloudHub applications. Scale SaaS integrations across multiple instances without worry.
CloudHub Insight: Get in-depth visibility into business transactions and events on your Mule ESB applications. By tracking all data in an application, CloudHub Insight makes information searchable, helps you find and recover from any errors that occurred during message processing, and replays your transactions instantly.
Connected Company: With the increasing number of customer endpoints, a connected companyoptimizes engagement and provides a single view of customer data across all applications, systems, services, and devices.
Components: Message processors which execute business logic on messages, enabling specific actions without writing any Mule ESB-specific code.

D

Data Encryption: The process of using algorithms or ciphers to protect electronic communication. See more on data encryption with Mule Enterprise Security »
Data Integration: The process of retrieving and combining data from different sources into a unified set for users, organizations, and applications. See more on data integration »
Data Mapping: The process defining a link between two disparate data models. It is often the first step towards data integration. See more on data mapping »
DataWeave: A transformer within Anypoint Studio that delivers visual design of complex data transformations, allowing you to design flows and map data from a single tool. Support for XML, JSON, CSV, POJOs, and more help you manage the deluge of enterprise data formats.
Data Migration: Moving a specific set of data from one system to the other. It contains a source system where the data resides prior to the migration, criteria determining the scope of data to be migrated, a transformation that the data will go through, and a destination system where the data will be inserted after. More on data migration »
Data Sense: The use of message metadata to facilitate application design. With this functionality, Anypoint Studio acquires information about data, such as data type and structure, in order to advise how to accurately map or use data in your application.
Dataloader.io: The #1 data loading app on the Salesforce AppExchange, dataloader.io is a web-based data loader for Salesforce that makes it easy to import, export, and delete unlimited amounts of data in Salesforce.
Decouple: In computer architecture, decoupling allows two or more systems to communicate to each other without dependency on or knowledge of other systems.

E

Enterprise Service Bus: An Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is a software architecture model with a set of rules and principles for integrating applications. In Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), anESB replaces point-to-point integration, and ESB products enable users to build this type of architecture.
ETL: ETL (extract, transform, load) processes are three database functions. They extract or read data from a database, transform the extracted data into a structure that can be placed into another database, and load or write the data into the target database.

F

G

H

HL7 Standards: Health Level 7 Standards(HL7) are a set of guidelines that allow for communication between healthcare systems in a consistent manner. HL7 standards allow for the exchange, sharing, retrieval, and integration of electronic health information between medical applications.
Hybrid Integration: Hybrid integration provides the perfect middle ground solution for enterprises, assuring that data from on-premise legacy systems can integrate with cloud data, giving businesses the best of both worlds.
Hybrid Integration Platform: Hybrid integration platform (HIP) leverages both an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) and cloud-based integration, such as an integration platform as a service (iPaaS), to connect on-premises and cloud resources.

I

integration Platform: An integration platform enables connectivity between disparate applications, systems, and services.
Internet of Things: The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of physical objects that connect to the internet. These objects contain embedded technology to communicate with their internal states and external environment.
iPaaS: An integration platform as a service (iPaaS) is a cloud-based integration solution that connects to SaaS and cloud services with a secure method of accessing on-premises applications behind a firewall.

J

JDBC: Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) is the industry standard for creating connectivity between Java programming language and numerous databases. It enables users to execute operations over a data source using the Java programming language.
JMS: Java Messaging Service (JMS) is a widely-used API for message-oriented middleware, allowing for communication between different components of a distributed application to be loosely coupled, reliable, and asynchronous.

K

L

legacy systems: In the context of computing, legacy systems are outdated computer systems, methods, technologies, or applications that are still used.
Legacy Systems Modernization: Legacy Systems Modernization utilizes legacy systems while supporting emerging technologies and business processes. An Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) serves as a communication layer responsible for exposing legacy systems data to new consumers.

M

Mainframe: A high-performance computer, employed mainly in large organizations, capable of supporting high-volume, bulk data processing operations.
Master Data Management: Master Data Management (MDM) congregates and maintains a consistent view of a business's core entities across applications, services, and systems. It enables businesses to easily merge, standardize, de-duplicate, cleanse, and transform data.
Maven: Maven is a Java development tool that you can use to develop projects in Mule ESB. Mule ESB provides built-in functionality to enable Maven support for Anypoint Studio projects and provides Maven archetypes for building new Mule ESB applications.
MEL: See Mule Expression Language
Messaging Platform: In computer software, a messaging platform refers to a platform that enables the messaging between different applications within a single application infrastructure.
MLLP: Minimal Lower Layer Protocol (MLLP), also known as Lower Layer Protocol (LLP), defines the leading and trailing delimiters for HL7 messages.
MMC: See Mule Enterprise Management Console
mule Application: In Mule ESB, a mule application packages one or many flows into a deployment unit that can be managed together. Flows that share a common development life cycle and/or share components are typically packaged in a single application.
Mule Enterprise Management: Mule Enterprise Management centralizes management and monitoring functions for all Mule ESB Enterprise deployments from standalone instances, a cluster, or embedded in application servers. Learn more about Mule Enterprise Management »
Mule Enterprise Security: Mule Enterprise Security is a collection of security features that enforce secure access to information in Mule ESB applications including blocking unauthorized access to your systems, data encryption, and threat management. See more on Mule Enterprise Security »
Mule ESB: Mule Enterprise Service Bus is Java-based ESB that allows developers to connect applications and facilitate the exchange of data with the use of Anypoint Connectors, Anypoint Templates, and drag-and-drop tooling. Learn more about Mule ESB »
Mule ESB Community: The Mule ESB Community provides the most widely used open-sources ESB. The Mule ESB Developer Community also offers documentation, downloads, and access to MuleSoft forums.
Mule ESB Enterprise: Mule ESB Enterprise is the enterprise version of Mule ESB, with additional features and capabilities ideal for production deployments of Mule ESB. Additional features include Anypoint Enterprise Security, deep visibility, operational control, and technical support.
Mule ESB Standalone: Mule ESB Standalone is Mule ESB without Anypoint Studio where a different set of example applications exist as files in the examples folder of the product distribution. Example applications can be accessed from the computer's console and are used as the foundations upon which to build apps.
Mule Expression Language: Mule Expression Language (MEL) is a lightweight, Mule ESB-specific expression language that enables quick and elegant filtering, routing, or acting upon the different parts of the Mule ESB message object.
Mule Healthcare Toolkit: Mule Healthcare Toolkit is a collection of features that facilitate integration with healthcare systems by providing the tools needed to easily create, read, and transform HL7 messages within Mule ESB.
Mule Flow: A Mule flow is a simple yet flexible mechanism that enables orchestration of services using the message flow capabilities of Mule ESB. Mule flow automates the integration process and constructs sophisticated integration solutions by simply building them from over 120 Anypoint Connectors provided by MuleSoft.
Mule Foundation: Mule Foundation is a MuleSoft consulting service designed to help you get started with MuleSoft with Mule ESB experts leveraging experience and knowledge to ensure efficient implementation of Mule ESB and optimize your architecture for technical requirements.
Mule Management Console: Mule Enterprise Management Console is the user interface providing visibility into the enterprise runtime environment, reducing downtime and improving availability to facilitate scalability and maximize performance.
Mule Studio: See Anypoint Studio
MuleForge: See Mule ESB Developer Community
MUnit: MUnit is an open-source, beta-version Mule ESB testing framework. Although MUnit is not yet supported by MuleSoft, access to MUnit's code repository and developer documentation is on github.

N

.NET Integration: .NET integration allows for connectivity between .NET applications on-premises or in the cloud. Learn more about MuleSoft's .NET integration solutions »

O

On-premises: A type of software that is installed and run from an organization's in-house server and native computing resources rather than a remote facility, such as the cloud.
on-premises to Cloud: on-premises to cloud integration allows for secure connections between SaaS and cloud applications with enterprise systems and data sources on-premises.
Open Source: In open source, the original source code is freely available for universal redistribution and modification.

P

Point-to-point: Point-to-point architecture directly integrates one application to another to permit one-to-one communication between the two applications. It is often associated with increase in maintenance costs and lack of flexibility and manageability.

Q

R

REST: Representation State Transfer (REST) is an architectural style that specifies constraints that if applied to a web service, induce desirable properties, such as performance, scalability, and modifiability, that enable services to work on the Web.
RESTful Web Services: RESTful web services are meant to be work on the web. They expose a set of resources that conform to the constraints described in the architectural constraints.

S

SaaS: See Software as a Service
SaaS Integration: SaaS integration enables connectivity across SaaS applications, systems, and services to integrate and orchestrate applications, data sources, and services across the cloud.
Salesforce Integration: Connect Salesforce to enterprise applications in the cloud or on-premises with Anypoint Platform. Learn more about MuleSoft solutions for Salesforce integration »
Service Oriented Architecture: Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is software architecture based on the creation of a repository of standardized and reusable services which can be composed into an aggregate service to automate a business process. This is known as service-orientation.
Single Customer View: A single customer view is an aggregated, holistic representation of all data about an organization's customers, beneficial for providing a unified identity of personal data and customer behavior.
SOAP: Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) is a lightweight XML-based messaging protocol that specifies the exchange of information in the implementation of web services. SOAP messages are independent of any operating system or protocol.
Software as a Service: Software as a Service (SaaS) is a way of delivering applications via the Internet as a web-based service. Access over the Internet means there is no need to download or maintain any software.
Spaghetti Code: Often referred to as "point-to-point integration, spaghetti code is source code written without a coherent structure. Often custom integrations, these connections have no central way to monitor or troubleshoot. This is not effective for scaling given the tight dependency between applications.

T

Tcat: Tcat Server is an Enterprise Tomcat Application Server which greatly simplifies integration, management and application provisioning tasks. It is used to deploy multiple applications across servers.
Tomcat: Apache Tomcat is the world's most widely used open source web application server. It is often used to power server sites to large enterprise networks.
Transformer: A transformer prepares a message to be processed through a Mule ESB flow by enhancing or altering the message header or message payload

U

Unlock your Back Office: Unlocking your back office permits access to back office data through integration, helping streamline and automate business processes.

V

W

Web Services: A standardized way of facilitating communication between electronic devices and integrating Web-based applications over a network.