The purpose of a "patterns" book 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. One of the most famous patterns books is Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-oriented Software by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson and John Vlissides, commonly known as the "Gang of Four" (GoF) book.
Since the publication of Design Patterns, many other pattern books, of varying quality, have been written. One famous patterns book is called Enterprise Integration Patterns: Designing, Building, and Deploying Messaging Solutions by Gregor Hohpe and Bobby Woolf. It is common for people to refer to this book by its initials EIP. 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.
Apache come up with Camel Project, which is an open-source, Java-based project that helps the user implement many of the design patterns in the EIP book. Because Camel implements many of the design patterns in the EIP book, it would be a good idea for people who work with Camel to have the EIP book as a reference.
Camel empowers you to define routing and mediation rules in a variety of domain-specific languages, including a Java-based Fluent API, Spring or Blueprint XML Configuration files, and a Scala DSL. This means you get smart completion of routing rules in your IDE, whether in a Java, Scala or XML editor. Apache Camel uses URIs to work directly with any kind of Transport or messaging model such as HTTP, ActiveMQ, JMS, JBI, SCA, MINA or CXF, as well as pluggable Components and Data Format options.
