There are a number of different choices for the distribution you may use for JBoss ESB. We'll discuss those now to give you a better idea what you may want to start with.
jbossesb-server-4.10.zip: Thejbossesb-serverbinary distribution is a pre-configured JBoss AS server distribution. The ESB Server comes pre-installed with JBoss Messaging, JBoss Webservices, all of the base ESB capabilities and is the best choice for those who want to get started quickly.Note that the ESB server is configured with version 4.2.3 of JBoss AS. While this distribution makes it easy to get started, we won't spend much time with it as this configuration is based on an older version of JBoss AS. What's not in this distribution? Well, this is not a full-blown Java EE server. As such, this distribution does not include support for clustered configurations, hibernate, or transactions and is probably not suited to being run in a large production environment.
jbossesb-4.10-src.zip: This is the next distribution you might want to consider and it is the source code distribution for JBoss ESB. You can use this distribution to build your own copy ofjbossesb-server-4.10.zip. Because JBoss ESB, like all the other JBoss projects, is open source, you can examine all the source code, learn from it, modify it, and even make contributions to it.As you've probably already guessed, we're following the Goldilocks principle here. The first one was the simplest to get started with, but was limited. The second one didn't have those limitations, but is more complicated to get started with.
jbossesb-4.10.zip: (This is referred to on the download page as the "binary" distribution), it is a standalone distribution of JBoss ESB. The binary distribution comes with installation scripts allowing it to be installed into a full JEE application server. We'll install this distribution into our JBoss AS 5.1.0.GA server and use it for the bulk of work in this book.