Enterprise Integration Patterns

Application Integration enables independently designed applications to work together. Key capabilities of application integration solutions include the reliably moving of messages among endpoints, message validation, mapping, transformation and orchestration – often referred to as Enterprise Integration Patterns.

The purpose of "patterns" is not to advocate new techniques that the authors have invented, but rather to document existing best practices within a particular field. By doing this, the authors of a patterns book hope to spread knowledge of best practices and promote a vocabulary for discussing architectural designs.

Although integration problems are diverse, Gregor Hohpe and Bobby Woolf noticed that many problems and their solutions are quite similar. They cataloged them in their book Enterprise Integration Patterns, a must-read for any integration professional (http://www.enterpriseintegrationpatterns.com). If you haven’t read it, we encourage you to do so. At the very least, it will help you understand Camel concepts faster and easier. As the subtitle of EIP suggests, the book focuses on design patterns for asynchronous messaging systems. The book discusses 65 patterns. Each pattern is given a textual name and most are also given a graphical symbol, intended to be used in architectural diagrams.

The enterprise integration patterns, or EIPs, are helpful not only because they provide a proven solution for a given problem, but also because they help define and communicate the problem itself. Patterns have known semantics, which makes communicating problems much easier. The difference between using a pattern language and describing the problem at hand is similar to using spoken language rather than sign language. If you’ve ever visited a foreign country, you’ve probably experienced the difference.