https://dzone.com/articles/which-integration-framework
Data exchanges between companies are increasing a lot. The number of applications that must be integrated is increasing, too. The interfaces use different technologies, protocols and data formats. Nevertheless, the integration of these applications must be modeled in a standardized way, realized efficiently and supported by automatic tests.
Three integration frameworks are available in the JVM environment, which fulfil these requirements: Spring Integration, Mule ESB and Apache Camel. They implement the well-known Enteprise Integration Patterns (EIP, http://www.eaipatterns.com) and therefore offer a standardized, domain-specific language to integrate applications.
These integration frameworks can be used in almost every integration project within the JVM environment – no matter which technologies, transport protocols or data formats are used. All integration projects can be realized in a consistent way without redundant boilerplate code.
This article compares all three alternatives and discusses their pros and cons. If you want to know, when to use a more powerful Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) instead of one of these lightweight integration frameworks, then you should read this blog post: http://www.kai-waehner.de/blog/2011/06/02/when-to-use-apache-camel/ (it explains when to use Apache Camel, but the title could also be „When to use a lightweight integration framework“).
Comparison Criteria
Several criteria can be used to compare these three integration frameworks:
- Open source
- Basic concepts / architecture
- Testability
- Deployment
- Popularity
- Commercial support
- IDE-Support
- Errorhandling
- Monitoring
- Enterprise readiness
- Domain specific language (DSL)
- Number of components for interfaces, technologies and protocols
- Expandability
