How should an ESB be packaged/deployed?

Question

I am trying to wrap my head around Apache Camel, which appears to be a lightweight ESB. If I understand Camel/ESBs correctly, then you can think of a Camel Route as a graph of n

Answer 1

Like in the other answers, it depends on your needs but an ESB is usually a combination of different integration processes that do not necessarily share the same lifecycle.

If this is the case for you I suggest using a jar per integration process approach. That way you can have different development lifecycles for each of the different jar's and you can assure your client that you have not touched any of the code except the one in that jar.

This does not mean you have to go with the ear solution. You can perfectly package the code for your different processes in a war file without the ear overhead.