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Apache Camel

Apache Camel

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What is Apache Camel?

Apache Camel is an open source integration platform.

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What is Apache Camel?

Apache Camel is an open source integration platform.

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Product Details

What is Apache Camel?

Apache Camel Technical Details

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Comparisons

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Reviews From Top Reviewers

(1-3 of 3)

Apache Camel is a mature low cost open source alternative to commercial messaging layer products

Rating: 9 out of 10
August 19, 2022
Vetted Review
Verified User
Apache Camel
1 year of experience
Apache Camel is used to provide a component of our Enterprise Service Bus, we use it for defining message routing and transformation rules, enabling the business to integration disparate on premise applications and cloud services in a robust and relatively low effort way. Our primary pattern for integration that we use is asynchronous messaging exchanged via an Enterprise Service Bus.
  • Rules for routing messages between senders and receivers
  • Applying transformations to messages
  • Low cost low effort solution
Cons
  • Open source solution relies on community for support
  • Lacks graphical user interface for message routing and transformation definitions
  • Relatively steep learning curve
Apache Camel is a very mature open source solution for implementing enterprise integration patterns, and is good for organizations that are comfortable using open source solutions with only community support that need the ability to route and transform messages between senders and receivers connected to an enterprise message bus solution with no licensing costs.
  • Message routing
  • Message transformation
  • Maturity
  • Enabled business to integrate disparate systems at relatively low cost
  • Required a relatively steep learning curve for resources to learn
  • Few expert resources are available on the market leading to senior resources being expensive
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.

Better on a Camel

Rating: 9 out of 10
July 15, 2016
SS
Vetted Review
Verified User
Apache Camel
3 years of experience
Apache Camel is used by many departments at Cox Communications, but not the entire organization. It enables quick and scaleable integration of diverse business systems at Cox and reduces development effort and resources. Various Camel components are used and there is even a customized version of Camel Http4 component. Also Camel fits well in the existing infrastructure at Cox.
  • 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.
Cons
  • Camel features and documentation can get confusing to new users. Documentation can and should be improved. Also it would help if there are more tutorials available. Certification in Camel and related technologies like Servicemix and Karaf would also help.
  • The Camel infrastructure probably needs to be rebuilt (hopefully this may happen with version 3.0). At this time the latest production release of Camel (2.17.x) is not built with the latest version of Java (JDK 1.8).
  • Camel should also move towards becoming a "heavyweight" ESB product, though this may detract from some of its desirable features.
Apache Camel is well suited for integration of existing software programs/components with newer and external systems. It supports SOAP and REST protocols pretty well. It was not designed to directly support front end systems. It has limited to non-existent support for Javascript. It is not suitable for creating simple standalone applications and meaningful deployment does require use of other frameworks like Spring/Karaf/JBoss.
  • This is hard to guage, but definitely the effort and resources required to develop and deploy new applications has gone down considerably. Approximately 50-70% lesser resources compared to the traditional way of developing applications.
  • Code complexity and maintenance costs have gone down, again over 50%.
  • Unit testing has cut down on bugs in production. There are far fewer bugs than would have been the case with plain Java. Approximately 70% less bugs discovered.
  • Camel is a free, open source product. It is free as opposed to similar proprietary products like Tibco Business Works.
Apache Camel has been the integration framework of choice, but I was not the person to make the decision to use it. Compared to other competing products like Tibco Business Works, etc., it is free and open source and its licensing policy is acceptable to the management of Cox.

EIP using Camel

Rating: 8 out of 10
April 03, 2017
Vetted Review
Verified User
Apache Camel
3 years of experience
We use it as the processing backbone/Enterprise Integration Pattern (EIP) framework for several products that we develop. It is used to provide components for message ingest, orchestration and export. By orchestration, I mean the determination and execution of the path of any single message through the application. It also is our primary error handling mechanism as it provides out-of-the-box error retry, waiting and exponential backoff.
  • The Java DSP is one of the primary reasons we chose Camel over Spring Integration's XML-based route definitions. It provides compile-time checking of syntax with auto-complete in an IDE (Eclipse, etc).
  • The component documentation on the website is phenomenal.
  • Error handling mechanisms are robust and easy to use and set up. Default settings are great and intuitive.
  • The ability to define distinct contexts within the same application and define context-wide, context-specific error handling is great as well.
Cons
  • I find the "seda" endpoint to be less obvious that it is doing multi-threading than Spring Integration's executor mechanism.
  • Integration with Spring Beans is pretty good, but I believe SI's is a bit better (for obvious reasons, both being Spring products).
  • SI's use support is probably a bit better/faster and I believe the user base is larger so that there are most questions/answers for SI on StackOverflow
Message processing, especially with high throughput, is an excellent use case. File system monitoring, JMS ingest, etc., is really great. I would most consider it for automated processing scenarios. Although it provides components to support REST endpoints, I would choose frameworks such as Jersey or Spring REST for that. Although it supports a response mechanism, I don't think I would choose to use it in systems where I need fine-tuned control of responses.
  • 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.
  • Spring Integration
We did a comparison of the two products with an example application that tested about 10 distinct EIP pattern. We wrote Camel in XML and Java DSL and SI in XML. This was about 3 years ago. At the time, I found the threading model in SI to be more intuitive and Camel's seda. However, Camel's documentation at the time was far and away more complete (Wiki pages for Camel vs looking through XML schema for SI). Since the SI has improved their documentation. The main factor that I believe still sets Camel apart is the Java DSL. Writing routes is complicated enough, but doing so in XML would be just painful.
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