what exactly a inbound end point and outbound end point in mule?

Question

I have been trying to figure out, what exactly a inbound end point and outbound end point. For me it is bit of an eluding to understand.

what are exactly inbound and outbound endpoints for/do in mule flow? if a flow wants send message which endpoint shoud be used viz when receiving. Or when an application want to invoke a flow which end point it should communicate to?

Answer 1

Inbound endpoints are message sources (http://www.mulesoft.org/documentation/display/current/Message+Sources), which as the name suggests is where messages are created. They can be created based on external events (like an incoming HTTP request or JMS message) or by polling (like files in a directory).

Outbound endpoints and anything else you see in a flow (except exception strategies) are message processors (http://www.mulesoft.org/documentation/display/current/Message+Processors), which means they do something with the message in-flight the flow. Outbound endpoints are message processors that send the current message to "destinations" like a JMS queue, an HTTP server, a file, ...