Make sure you didn't miss anything with this list of the Best of the Week in the Enterprise Integration  (Apr. 18 to Apr. 24). Here they are, in order of popularity:

1. 10 Features in Java 8 You Haven't Heard Of

Java 8 has a lot of new features - some are powerful new classes and idioms, while others are just things which should have been there from the get-go. Here are ten little gems definitely worth knowing about.

2. How to Generate a Random String in Java using Apache Commons Lang

In a previous post, we had shared a small function that generated random string in Java. It turns out that similar functionality is available from a class in the extremely useful apache commons lang library.

3. Mule’s New Batch Module and Polling with Watermark

A lot of new features have been introduced in the Mule 3.5 release. In this post I briefly explain how four of these new features can be used. Then I show how to apply these new features to achieve similar functionality to that described in a previous blog post.

4. Monitoring Mule with Java Mission Control

Starting with JDK 7 update 40 (7u40), the Java Mission Control is bundled with the HotSpot JVM. The Java Mission Control can be used for simple monitoring of a Mule instance, for instance during development or for those content with what the community edition of Mule has to offer.

5. APIs, Connectors and Integration Applications

In summary, integration applications use connectors to connect into systems via the APIs that those systems expose. Connectors make it easier for the creator of the integration application to work with those APIs since they don’t have to program directly against those APIs.