Service Bus
If you hear "Service Bus" and think of the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) pattern, you're on to something. The name is no accident – the Azure Service Bus is designed to be an implementation of the ESB pattern.
If you're not familiar with the ESB, then for this discussion you need to know it's a systems architecture that connects any number of enterprise applications through a single intermediate, known as the "bus". The bus brokers messages between systems and handles authentication, among other functions. The software found in an ESB implementation is often known as "middleware". The typical ESB pattern is used to connect applications within the same enterprise.
The Service Bus handles similar functions as an ESB, but between applications in different enterprises. The Service Bus can securely relay messages from other enterprises to and from WCF endpoints hosted behind our firewall. In this relay mode, we do not need to open ports or reconfigure our firewall. The Service Bus...
