MuleSoft today announced Mule Studio, an Eclipse-based graphical design tool for its market-leading open source enterprise service bus (ESB). Mule Studio is the first and only ESB design tool that features a round-trip editing capability that enables developers to design and edit Mule message flows interchangeably in the graphical view or in XML. For the first time, developers can now build integration applications using a graphical environment, and retain the visibility, flexibility and control of the underlying code.

“Until now, ESB developers were forced to choose between the ‘black-box’ approaches of proprietary vendors like TIBCO, Oracle and IBM, which add complexity and obscure the integration code, and ‘doodleware’ tools which are good for getting started, but are not useful for real development or ongoing maintenance,” said Mateo Almenta-Reca, Director of Product Management at MuleSoft. “With Mule Studio’s round-trip editing technology, Mule ESB leapfrogs these approaches and brings a new level of openness and control to graphical integration development.”

Mule Studio’s unique round-trip editing capability was made possible by Mule ESB’s new flow-based architecture, enabling a graphical representation to map easily and seamlessly to the underlying XML configuration code. Other open source ESB tools are only useful for getting started and creating a simple XML, while real ongoing development must happen through code. Legacy proprietary integration stacks, on the other hand, use their graphical tools to hide underlying complexity, so everything must be done in the graphical environment, which can be frustrating for developers and makes resolving configuration issues difficult and risky.

Mule Studio users can take advantage of the following benefits:

• Speedy graphical integration design— With no need to learn XML to get started, users can take advantage of Mule Studio’s graphical designer alone to create Mule ESB configurations.

• Seamless cloud integration <http://www.mulesoft.com/mule-ion-ipaas-cloud-based-integration-demand>  — Mule ESB’s rich set of out-of-the-box cloud connectors are available directly from the Mule Studio palette, which can also be customized with other connectors (e.g., downloaded from the MuleForge community)

• One-click deployment — Mule applications built in Mule Studio can be tested directly within the design environment and deployed to a Mule ESB Enterprise application repository with a single click.

• Integration with familiar tools – Mule Studio’s Eclipse-based plug-in complements existing developer processes and provides easy integration with Mule Maven projects.

• Create Mule Flows in Mule Studio, XML or both – with round-trip editing, all developers can create and modify Mule Flows using the graphical drag and drop interface, while advanced developers can drill down and modify the underlying XML configuration.   Studio is the only ESB design tool which allows developers to move back and forth between graphical development tool and the underlying code.

“With a team of many developers worldwide, we’re always looking for new tools to be more agile in the development of our integration projects. Mule Studio will help our teams to significantly accelerate the development of applications with Mule ESB,” said Grigory Kagan, VP, Global Head of Data Messaging and Integration of Cantor Fitzgerald/BGC Partners. “This new graphical design capability further cements Mule as a world-class integration platform that can be considered to be among the best in the industry.”

 Availability and Additional Information

Mule Studio is free to use and is immediately available for download. For more information and download details, please visit: http://www.mulesoft.org/