Acknowledgments

We appreciate the contributions of many people who have helped us make this book a reality. We couldn’t have written it without the discussions, enthusiasm, remarks, and code and chapter reviews of these individuals.

Special thanks to Andy Verberne, who provided invaluable feedback about the chapters and the code examples. We were also happy with the support and feedback we received from the Mule team, especially Ross Mason and Daniel Feist; and from the ServiceMix team, particularly Guillaume Nodet and Bruce Snyder. We also want to thank Guy Crets for his comments in the early stages of writing this book and for his enthusiasm and support throughout our writing period. We don’t have enough space to mention all the people involved, but your help is appreciated.

At Manning Publications, we’re grateful to our development editor Jeff Bleiel. Jeff was great to work with, and his work improved the readability of our manuscript a lot. We also want to thank publisher Marjan Bace for giving us the opportunity to write this book and for his no-nonsense comments and remarks, which made this book what it is. Thanks to the Manning production team for turning our manuscript into a real book. Finally, we want to thank the reviewers who gave valuable feedback at all stages during manuscript development: Edmon Begoli, Martyn Fletcher, Valentin Crettaz, Lajos Moczar, Andrew Oswald, Davide Piazza, Rick Wagner, Christian Siegers, Craig Borysowich, Jeff Davis, Holger Hoffstätte, Rodney Biresch, Jeroen Benck-huijsen, John Reynolds, Doug Warren, Steve Smith, Hugh Taylor, Dmitri Maximovich, Andrew Perepelytsya, Ross Mason, Dave Corun, Glenn Stokol, Scott Stirling, Andrew Cooke, Emmanuel B. Sangalang, and Dan Alford.

And very special thanks to Ross Mason and Guillaume Nodet for taking the time out of their busy schedules to look at the manuscript and to write forewords to our book.

Tijs Rademakers

I would like to thank my girlfriend Ankie, who recently gave birth to our first child, Liv. Without your support during all the hours of writing, this book would have never been written. I promise to be more involved in our little family from now on. I also want to thank my parents Wil and Fieke and in-laws Fer and Annie for their love and understanding. Jos, thanks for all your commitment, enthusiasm, and knowledge during the years of writing and discussing this book. Also thanks to my managers Diego and Hugo for providing time and freedom in my day-to-day job.

Jos Dirksen

Many people have supported me during the writing of this book. In particular I’d like to thank Tijs for keeping me on my toes during the writing of this book. I’d also like to thank the team at Manning for helping us to write and produce this book: specifically Jeff, for reviewing and tidying up the chapters, and of course all the reviewers for taking the time to offer comments and feedback.

I also want to express my gratitude to Diego, my boss at Atos Origin, for giving me time to write parts of this book during office hours. Another colleague I’d like to thank is Andy, who provided us with an extensive review and also spent much of his time doing the final technical review of the book.

Finally, I want to thank my girlfriend Brigitte—who when this book comes out will be my wife—for not complaining too much about the evenings and weekends spent working on the book (and my occasional bad temper).