This document provides an overview of Mule ESB fundamentals including: - A brief history of mainframe computers, web servers, SOA, and the need for an ESB solution - What an ESB is according to Wikipedia - Topics that will be covered include the history of Mule, basics and samples, advanced topics like flow structure and performance, Mule Studio, and Mule Cloud Hub - Performance optimization techniques like thread management, asynchronous flows, and return transformers are discussed