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A number of solutions that broker or mediate Web services exchanges are described as ESBs, and Synapse can reasonably be included in that category. However, what most defines an ESB is not its architecture, but its function, which in general terms is to provide

• a manageable system of message-based connectivity
• with a high degree of performance, scalability and reliability
• spanning multiple transports and heterogeneous endpoints.

In providing management through WS-* to Apache Axis, Apache Synapse provides a very important and useful capability to that specific Web service broker. However, in its current implementation Apache Synapse would be overextended as an "architectural" solution. Building an SOA on Apache Synapse would presume that all exchanges in the SOA would be Web Service exchanges based on SOAP, that the management of the exchanges would be invoked exclusively by means of WS-*, and that the underlying SOAP technology at each brokered endpoint would be Apache Axis2.

ServiceMix is a full ESB that can work with many different SOAP Stacks such as Axis, WSIF, XFire, ActiveSOAP and JAX-WS. ServiceMix also has full support for Routing, Transformation and Orchestration. Like Apache Synapse, Apache ServiceMix provides mediation for web services exchanges and is designed to support transformation, management and routing through WS-* standards. However, this capability is provided independently of without dependency on the SOAP stack, and most importantly, is provided through the same services architecture used for all message formats and transports, including, but certainly not limited to, Web services.

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