title: Differences between Mule ESB and java enterprise application server
body: <p>I'm currently watching <a href="http://www.mulesoft.com/webinars/mule-101-demonstrations-all-things-mule-0" rel="nofollow">Mule 101: Demonstrations of all things Mule</a> tutorial because I was willing to understand the whole <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_service_bus" rel="nofollow">Enterprise Service Bus</a> thing. And this tutorial resembles many other tutorials I've watched about application servers or PaaS.</p>
  
  <p>What are the differences between Mule ESB and Glassfish Domain Administration Server (for example)?</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>You can start multiple applications in a cluster. Checked!</li>
  <li>You got modular architecture containing cohesive atomic services. Checked!</li>
  <li>You got horizontally scalability. Checked!</li>
  <li>Multiple physical servers behind one load-balancer. Checked!</li>
  <li>Interoperability between different language based servers - like communication between Glassfish and IIS. Ok, if you use canonical data model (REST, SOAP, XML) you are not supposed to have great problems. Semi-checked!</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>What functionality Mule ESB has, which no modern application server hasn't?</p>
  
  <p>Sorry, for not-so StackOverflow type of question, I understand that comparison questions with no clear answer are not tolerated here.</p>