Chapter 1. Key Features

After a quick introduction about what Apache Camel is, this chapter will introduce the key features provided by Camel. It provides just an overview of these features; the details will come in dedicated chapters.

In an enterprise, you see a lot of different software and systems in the IT ecosystem. In order to consolidate the data and sync the systems, the enterprise would want to implement communication and integration of these systems. This communication or integration is not so easy, as we have to deal with the specifications on each system the protocol and the message's data format are different most of the time, so we have to transform and adapt to each system.

Using point-to-point communication is one option. However, the problem with this approach is that we tighten the integration of a couple of systems. Changing to other systems or protocols requires refactoring of the implementation. Moreover, dealing with multiple systems is not so easy with point-to-point.

So, instead of point-to-point, we use mediation. Mediation reduces complexity and provides a more flexible approach by adding and using a tier between the systems (man in the middle). The purpose is to facilitate the information flow and integration of the systems.

Apache Camel is a mediation framework.