Preface

Apache Camel is a Java framework for building system integrations.

Why, you may well ask, does anyone need such a framework? System integration is pretty much a solved problem. After all, we have been connecting various frontends to web services, message brokers, and databases for years! Surely this is a well-understood domain that requires no further abstractions.

Not quite.

Apache Camel, since its release in 2007, has disrupted the integration market much like the Spring Framework disrupted the Java EE market back in 2003. Camel enables a new way of doing, and thinking about, system integrations that results in much cleaner, easier to understand code, which in turn results in less work, less bugs, and easier maintenance. These are big claims, and to validate them you only need to look at the large and active Apache Camel community, the growing number of commercial integration products based on Camel, and the talks on Camel that appear at most middleware developer conferences to feel that there is a good buzz around Camel, and for very good reason.

This book is targeted at readers who already have some familiarity with Camel, and are looking for tips on how Camel may be able to better help them solve more complex integration challenges. This book is structured as a series of over 100 how-to recipes, including step-by-step instructions on using Camel to solve common integration tasks. Each recipe includes a brief explanation of what Camel is doing internally, and references on where to find more information for those who want to dig deeper.

This book may not be a good introduction/beginner book about Camel, though if you have familiarity with other integration technologies, and learn well by doing, you may find this book's recipe approach helpful. This book does not spend a lot of time explaining Camel concepts in great depth.

For readers looking for more conceptual coverage of Camel (with lots of code examples), we would recommend reading the excellent book Camel in Action by Claus Ibsen and Jonathan Anstey, published by Manning. For a more introductory guide, look at Instant Apache Camel Message Routing by Bilgin Ibryam, published by Packt Publishing. The Apache Camel website (http://camel.apache.org) is the authoritative site on Camel, with a long list of articles and documentation that will help you on your journey of using Camel.