Mule Runtime
| Mule runtime engine version 3.8 reached its End of Life on November 16, 2021. For more information, contact your Customer Success Manager to determine how to migrate to the latest Mule version. |
This guide offers information about how to use Mule Runtime, commonly called Mule, or Mule ESB to integrate systems, orchestrate web services and configure the runtime environment. The visual representations of Mule applications you see throughout the documentation are usually depicted as seen in the Anypoint Studio IDE.
About Mule
Mule is the lightweight integration runtime engine that allows you to connect anything, anywhere. Rather than creating multiple point-to-point integrations between systems, services, APIs, and devices, you use Mule to create applications that intelligently manage message routing, data mapping, orchestration, reliability, security, and scalability between nodes. Plug other systems and applications into Mule and let it handle communication between systems, allowing you to track and monitor your application ecosystem and external resources.
Note: Mule is so named because it “carries the heavy load” of developing an infrastructure that supports multiple applications and systems both flexibly and intelligently.
What is a Mule Application?
Integration developers write Mule applications to tie together various systems. Mule applications are configured to run on Mule runtime to process inbound information, and ingest this information in a pre-defined manner. An expected request to a running Mule application naturally triggers Mule to encode the event and data in a Mule message, passing it along a single thread or multiple threads. Mule transforms and routes the Mule message in stages, according to the processors configured to interact with the message at the various stages. Mule gets the message to its destination, passing the requisite data to the recipient.
The Mule application is defined in an XML document that specifies the necessary dependencies for the Mule application to run. You can configure your Mule application to process data in a variety of ways, and can adjust the Mule runtime instance accordingly. Mule is packaged with components, connectors, and transformers that work quickly to get the data and metadata you need from your Mule application, and feed it to any destination.
Possible Mule Goals
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Deploy or integrate applications or systems on premises or in the cloud
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Employ out-of-the-box connectors to create SaaS integration applications
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Build and expose APIs
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Consume APIs
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Create Web services which orchestrate calls to other services
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Create interfaces to expose applications for mobile consumption
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Integrate B2B with solutions that are secure, efficient, and quick to build and deploy
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Shift applications onto the cloud
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Connect B2B e-commerce activities
Installation, Management and Deployment
To get started with a local installation of Mule runtime, see Download and Start Mule Runtime.
You can deploy Mule applications to MuleSoft’s cloud platform via CloudHub and manage them via Runtime Manager. Runtime Manager can be used to manage local deployments as well, making it more versatile than its predecessor Mule Management Console, which is used only for local Mule deployments.
Discover other Mule runtime deployment solutions in the Deploying section.