Published in · 5 min read · Jul 11, 2022
Connectivity to your applications and data is one of the core pillars of MuleSoft Anypoint Platform that empowers developers to innovate at scale. Anypoint Connectors are the center of connectivity and MuleSoft Exchange has 250+ out-of-the-box connectors to many popular SaaS, Cloud, and traditional applications.
In the ever-expanding software application landscape you may not find an out-of-the-box Connector for your favorite application. Not to worry…
This post will walk you through how MuleSoft enables connectivity with any and all applications — with or without Connectors.
For simplification, let’s divide the application landscape along two axes and four quadrants — application category (modern and traditional) and usage (common and niche):
- Modern applications are cloud/SaaS based that typically expose individual APIs or complete API specifications.
- Traditional applications are mainly on-premises and could use SOAP service, messages, files, SDKs, or some legacy approach for integration.
With the above context let’s see how MuleSoft supports integration with modern and traditional applications in common and niche cases.
1. Common modern applications
For commonly used modern applications (top right quadrant), the MuleSoft Anypoint Platform provides out-of-the-box Connectors. The benefits of using Connectors include reduced code complexity, simplified authentication, inferring metadata, and easier code maintenance.
Example Connectors for modern enterprise applications include: DocuSign, Salesforce, Workday, and Zoom and for infrastructure services include Azure Data Lake, Amazon S3, and Google Pub/Sub from major cloud providers. Browse MuleSoft Exchange for the full list.
There are four categories of Connectors — Premium, Select, MuleSoft Certified and Community; see description and support policy for details.
Typically Connectors in this quadrant fall under Select category that are included as part of the Anypoint Platform subscription.
2. Common traditional applications
Similar to modern applications, MuleSoft Anypoint offers Connectors for commonly used traditional applications including SAP ERP, Oracle ERP, IBM CICS, and Microsoft Dynamics. In addition, Connectors are also available for common standards like X12, EDIFACT, AS2, and HL7.
One key difference compared to the modern category is some (not all) Connectors in this quadrant fall under the Premium type requiring an additional license.
See link for list of Premium Connectors.
3. Niche modern applications
While Connectors are a great way to integrate with your applications MuleSoft may not have a Connector for your favorite application.
When there is no out-of-the-box Connector available you can use one of the two options: a) Connector Generator and b) HTTP Connector.
The Connector Generator, as the name suggests, generates an Anypoint Connector from an API specification in OAS (aka Swagger) or RAML format. The Connector can then be downloaded into Anypoint Studio and be used to connect to the target application.
Several vendors publish API specification for their applications making it easy to consume. For example, Avalara AvaTax and Pricefx publish OAS specifications. If the vendor doesn’t provide then you can write an OAS/RAML specification for the operations you are interested in which can then be used to generate a Connector.
Using the Connector Generator is easy; just upload the API spec into Anypoint Design Center and publish it to Anypoint Exchange. Now from Exchange you can browse all the REST API operations, view documentation, and download a Mule Connector as seen below. See the documentation on REST Connector Generator for further details.
The second option is to use Anypoint HTTP Connector to call the individual REST APIs directly; typically application vendors document APIs in a Developer portal if they are not publishing the OAS specification.
4. Niche traditional applications
This fourth quadrant represents niche legacy applications that doesn’t expose APIs. Such applications typically provide one or more approaches for integration including SOAP-based web service, file, message, database call, or script (to call a function) and MuleSoft has Connectors for all of these approaches.
For instance, Mule Scripting module enables the execution of custom logic written in a scripting language, the Java module for integrating with custom Java code, and Microsoft .NET Connector enables the execution of native .NET code.
Can I create my own custom Connector?
Yes, you can if none of the above options work and you have a special case.
The REST-based and traditional integration approaches work fine for application-oriented use cases but infrastructure services like AWS S3 or Google BigQuery will require more nuanced integration for file and network management or for performance optimization. For such cases, Java-based connectors work much better and Mule SDK for Java enables you to create a custom connector. See the list of certified connectors published in Exchange by the MuleSoft implementation partners.
Conclusion
MuleSoft Anypoint Connectors are a big part of enabling application connectivity to deliver with speed and agility. MuleSoft Exchange provides 250+ connectors for commonly used modern and niche applications.
When a Connector is not available for your application there are options including Connector Generator, calling REST APIs using HTTP Connector, or building your own custom connector. With a wide range of options MuleSoft enables you to connect to any application rapidly and create innovative solutions.
