ESB ISB or IB SB and MB

Philip recently wrote an article on Two Buses or One and I thought I would add my blogsworth.

Firstly I would like to repeat my dislike of the term bus in this context. It had a perfectly good use in the guts of the hardware and meant something that all the hardware could send and listen to. But I have lost this argument and have to live with the industry and its Humpty Dumpty use of words.

My main thought on Philip’s two buses is that there is something wrong with the naming because an Information Service Bus and and Enterprise Service Bus can not be compared. It seems to suggest that information goes along one and ‘enterprise’ goes along the other. I think the situation would be improved if we talked about ‘Information Bus’ and ‘Service Bus’ as being two buses that are implemented across an ESB.

At this point we might think that there are other buses—the one that springs immediately to mind is a management and control bus (MB).

I think Philip is right when he dismisses the ‘Service to Data’ bus but my reason is slightly different. Service and information buses transport things whilst service to data is a transformation which is done in one place.

Any suggestions for further buses?