Apache Camel vs. Apache Kafka vs. TIBCO Rendezvous

Message brokering across different systems, with transactionality and the ability to have fine tuned control over what happens using Java (or other languages), instead of a heavy, proprietary languages. One situation that it doesn't fit very well (as far as I have experienced) is when your workflow requires significant data mapping. While possible when using Java tooling, some other visual data mapping tools in other integration frameworks are easier to work with.

Incentivized

Apache Kafka is well-suited for most data-streaming use cases. Amazon Kinesis and Azure EventHubs, unless you have a specific use case where using those cloud PaAS for your data lakes, once set up well, Apache Kafka will take care of everything else in the background. Azure EventHubs, is good for cross-cloud use cases, and Amazon Kinesis - I have no real-world experience. But I believe it is the same.

TIBCO Rendezvous is a fast and reliable mode of communication, although they are already outdated by TIBCO FTL, which is even more faster and reliable than it's predecessor. They are more suitable for communication between the TIBCO products as all the TIBCO suite of products support the TIBCO Rendezvous. They are more widely used by banks and stock ticker applications to broadcast the ticker information. Most of the applications support Java JMS mode easily and out of the box than the TIBCO Rendezvous. Hence the TIBCO software themselves have their own version of the JMS server called Tibco EMS ( Tibco Enterprise messaging service).

Incentivized

• Camel has an easy learning curve. It is fairly well documented and there are about 5-6 books on Camel.
• There is a large user group and blogs devoted to all things Camel and the developers of Camel provide quick answers and have also been very quick to patch Camel, when bugs are reported.
• Camel integrates well with well known frameworks like Spring, and other middleware products like Apache Karaf and Servicemix.
• There are over 150 components for the Camel framework that help integrate with diverse software platforms.
• Camel is also good for creating microservices.

Incentivized

• Really easy to configure. I've used other message brokers such as RabbitMQ and compared to them, Kafka's configurations are very easy to understand and tweak.
• Very scalable: easily configured to run on multiple nodes allowing for ease of parallelism (assuming your queues/topics don't have to be consumed in the exact same order the messages were delivered)
• Not exactly a feature, but I trust Kafka will be around for at least another decade because active development has continued to be strong and there's a lot of financial backing from Confluent and LinkedIn, and probably many other companies who are using it (which, anecdotally, is many).

Incentivized

• TIBCO RV supports faster delivery to broadcast any messages
• This is a best protocol to be used when we wanted to do Asynchronous communications
• RV supports multiple subscribers with a simple configuration

Incentivized

• didn't work well when our developers tried to transform heavy data sets
• Apache Camel's whole logic is based on java so team needs to have a great skill set in java
• if there are a handful of workflows then Apache Camel's full potential can't be realized

Incentivized

• Sometimes it becomes difficult to monitor our Kafka deployments. We've been able to overcome it largely using AWS MSK, a managed service for Apache Kafka, but a separate monitoring dashboard would have been great.
• Simplify the process for local deployment of Kafka and provide a user interface to get visibility into the different topics and the messages being processed.
• Learning curve around creation of broker and topics could be simplified

• Poor management tool.
• TIBCO RV needs a good knowledge on own networks.

Incentivized

Kafka is quickly becoming core product of the organization, indeed it is replacing older messaging systems. No better alternatives found yet

Incentivized

Not likely to renew or buy the license as they are using the TIBCO EMS as the primary mode of communication.

Incentivized

Apache Kafka is highly recommended to develop loosely coupled, real-time processing applications. Also, Apache Kafka provides property based configuration. Producer, Consumer and broker contain their own separate property file

Incentivized

Attending an official TIBCO classroom training, where you can have an active participation with an expert teacher, you can find the answers to all yours needs. In any case, if you are not satisfied on your requests, the teacher takes the time to find the best solution.

I had the opportunity to attend one and I could learn all features I needed for my business: now I can say TIBCO Rendezvous is very usable.

Incentivized

Support for Apache Kafka (if willing to pay) is available from Confluent that includes the same time that created Kafka at Linkedin so they know this software in and out. Moreover, Apache Kafka is well known and best practices documents and deployment scenarios are easily available for download. For example, from eBay, Linkedin, Uber, and NYTimes.

Incentivized

I never needed support for TIBCO Rendezvous. I always used it without any issue and until now I don't remember some situations where it interrupted its 24/7 uptime.

Incentivized

If you are looking for a Java-based open source low cost equivalent to webMethods or Azure Logic Apps, Apache Camel is an excellent choice as it is mature and widely deployed, and included in many vendored Java application servers too such as Redhat JBoss EAP. Apache Camel is lacking on the GUI tooling side compared to commercial products such as webMethods or Azure Logic Apps.

Incentivized

I used other messaging/queue solutions that are a lot more basic than Confluent Kafka, as well as another solution that is no longer in the market called Xively, which was bought and "buried" by Google. In comparison, these solutions offer way fewer functionalities and respond to other needs.

Incentivized

TIBCO EMS provides centralized server administration to manger the delivery of services in run time

Incentivized

• Very fast time to market in that so many components are available to use immediately.
• Error handling mechanisms and patterns of practice are robust and easy to use which in turn has made our application more robust from the start, so fewer bugs.
• However, testing and debugging routes is more challenging than working is standard Java so that takes more time (less time than writing the components from scratch).
• Most people don't know Camel coming in and many junior developers find it overwhelming and are not enthusiastic to learn it. So finding people that want to develop/maintain it is a challenge.

Incentivized

• Positive: Get a quick and reliable pub/sub model implemented - data across components flows easily.
• Positive: it's scalable so we can develop small and scale for real-world scenarios
• Negative: it's easy to get into a confusing situation if you are not experienced yet or something strange has happened (rare, but it does). Troubleshooting such situations can take time and effort.

Incentivized

• All a non-TIBCO based applications need to use the TIBCO Rendezvous APIs and reprogrammed to communicate with other application using the Tibco Rendezvous.
• All applications and enterprises need to have an enterprise license to communicate with each other.
• TIBCO offers their Rendezvous APIs in various programming languages. Hence any application can use these APIs to start using the Tibco Rendezvous. Although most application prefers not to as TIBCO Rendezvous is TIBCO 's closely guarded recipe.

Incentivized