Book Review: “Apache Camel Message Routing”

“Apache Camel Message Routing” is a new book (see http://www.packtpub.com/apache-camel-message-routing/book) published on August, 26th, 2013 by PACKT PUBLISHING (ISBN: 978-1783283477). Author is Bilgin Ibryam. As it’s subtitle says, the book describes how to “route, transform, split, multicast messages, and do much more with [Apache] Camel”.

Apache Camel is the best integration framework “on the market”. It has very good domain specific languages, many connectors, different companies behind it, and an awesome worldwide open source community. So, seeing a new book about Apache Camel is always good news!

Content

First of all, the book has only 50 pages. So it does not contain that much content. It offers a short introduction to Apache Camel. Afterwards, it explains several Enterprise Integration Patterns such as Splitter, Aggregator or Content-based Router, and how to implement these patterns with Apache Camel. The book uses nice screenshots and offers step-by-step explanations in each section. You can also download the source code examples for getting started quickly.

Conclusion

Good news:

• Finally, a new Apache Camel book
• Easy to read
• Good examples
• Good starting point for newbies

Bad news:

• Just 50 pages. Just for getting started. Therefore, very expensive.
• You can find all information of this book on Camel’s website for free (though, newbies might not find all this information easily by searching the website)
• “Camel in Action” is also available. That’s another awesome Apache Camel book, which also explains all basics, but also many many more details (500 pages)
• If you already know Apache Camel, you do NOT need this book

Summary:

If you are looking an easy-to-read book for getting started with Apache Camel, then this book is for you. Afterwards, you still need to buy “Camel in action”, too. “Camel in action” is not as easy as this one for getting started, as even the first chapters contain many details. This might be to much for newbies. So, it is no bad idea to start with this book, then buy “Camel in Action” for using Apache Camel in your projects.

 

Best regards,

Kai Wähner

Twitter: @KaiWaehner

Website: www.kai-waehner.de