Requirement Analysis: The organization wants to standardize dependencies across all new and ongoing MuleSoft projects to minimize the impact of frequent plugin version upgrades and external plugin project dependencies.

Solution: Creating a parent POM (Project Object Model) file with all required dependencies and referencing it in each application's POM.xml file is the best practice.

Implementation Steps:

Create Parent POM:

Define a parent POM.xml file that includes all common dependencies, plugin versions, and configurations.

Example of a parent POM.xml:

pom</artifactId> 1.0.0 pom org.mule.runtime <artifactId>mule-core-extensions-maven-plugin</artifactId> 1.0.0

Reference Parent POM:

In each application's POM.xml file, reference the parent POM.

Example of a child POM.xml referencing the parent POM:

4.0.0 com.example <artifactId>parent-pom</artifactId> 1.0.0 <artifactId>child-application</artifactId> 1.0.0

Build and Test: Ensure that all applications build successfully with the parent POM and test them to confirm that the common dependencies are correctly applied.

Advantages:

Consistency: Ensures all projects use the same versions of dependencies, reducing the risk of conflicts.

Manageability: Simplifies dependency management by centralizing it in one parent POM file.

Scalability: Makes it easier to update dependencies across multiple projects by changing only the parent POM.

References

MuleSoft Documentation on Managing dependencies with Maven

Apache Maven Documentation on POM Reference