TrustRadius Insights for Apache Camel are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Pros
Easy Learning Curve: Several users have found Apache Camel to have an easy learning curve, allowing them to quickly grasp the concepts and start using it efficiently.
Extensive Integration Support: Many reviewers have praised Apache Camel for its extensive support for integration with diverse software platforms. With over 150 components available, users can seamlessly integrate Camel with various frameworks and middleware products such as Spring, Apache Karaf, and Servicemix.
Robustness and Reliability: Numerous users have highlighted the robustness of Apache Camel in handling various information transfer protocols out-of-the-box. They appreciate that it is a reliable solution for their integration needs, making it suitable for creating microservices and handling complex business logic.
We use Apache Camel as a bridge between various systems, where implementation and message format is changing fairly often. Integration and tasks workflow pipeline. This system allows for fast and scale able integrations and deployment. This has saved us man time and power.
Pros
Adding new routes is very easy and efficient
Easy to use, easy to get up and running
Great integration with java frameworks
Cons
The documentation is a little deficient
Lacking a framework integration with big data capabilities
Likelihood to Recommend
Could be used to trigger batches and do large-scale processing, using its throttling. We have lots of end-points where the system needs to talk and pass the request to get the response. Using Apache camel it is extremely easy to configure and implement such business requirements. However, the drawback is you need someone in your team to understand and code for Apache Camel.
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology (Financial Services company, 5001-10,000 employees)
Apache Camel is used to provide a component of our Enterprise Service Bus, we use it for defining message routing and transformation rules, enabling the business to integration disparate on premise applications and cloud services in a robust and relatively low effort way. Our primary pattern for integration that we use is asynchronous messaging exchanged via an Enterprise Service Bus.
Pros
Rules for routing messages between senders and receivers
Applying transformations to messages
Low cost low effort solution
Cons
Open source solution relies on community for support
Lacks graphical user interface for message routing and transformation definitions
Relatively steep learning curve
Likelihood to Recommend
Apache Camel is a very mature open source solution for implementing enterprise integration patterns, and is good for organizations that are comfortable using open source solutions with only community support that need the ability to route and transform messages between senders and receivers connected to an enterprise message bus solution with no licensing costs.
VU
Verified User
Professional in Information Technology (Logistics & Supply Chain company, 5001-10,000 employees)
My team uses Apache Camel as a Platform as a Software service in the tech stack to perform integration of their code on a component basis by deriving it from files based on a defined logic and processes and then make those available to testers and UAT group. Apache Camel being opensource is very helpful for our team to perform their daily integration activities in non prod environment for quick testing of their work.
Pros
open source and a great set of component feature set - always latest features available for integration
works well with spring boot
great community and support for any kind of workflow
based on enterprise integration patterns which helps our developers achieve integration tasks with all kinds of API services
Cons
didn't work well when our developers tried to transform heavy data sets
Apache Camel's whole logic is based on java so team needs to have a great skill set in java
if there are a handful of workflows then Apache Camel's full potential can't be realized
Likelihood to Recommend
very well suited when data has to be extracted in itself from files based on defined logic and process workflows and integrated with other processes and applications in your architecture. Our teams put a gateway in front of the APIs for integrating data and ensuring data integrity before letting the application process the data.
VU
Verified User
Analyst in Information Technology (Education Management company, 10,001+ employees)
I've used Apache Camel as a great alternative integration framework compared to heavier middleware solutions from companies like IBM. It serves that purpose wonderfully, and is a total pleasure to use. Great plugins for almost any connector you could need, and they all work as expected.
Pros
Open source, which is vitally important
Great integration with Java frameworks such as Spring Boot, allowing it to be deployed however you need to deploy it
Wonderful testing tools as part of the framework
Cons
Documentation could use some work, sometimes it takes a bit of trial and error to figure out how to do something.
Likelihood to Recommend
Message brokering across different systems, with transactionality and the ability to have fine tuned control over what happens using Java (or other languages), instead of a heavy, proprietary languages.
One situation that it doesn't fit very well (as far as I have experienced) is when your workflow requires significant data mapping. While possible when using Java tooling, some other visual data mapping tools in other integration frameworks are easier to work with.
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Engineering (Financial Services company, 1001-5000 employees)
Apache Camel is being used for multiple projects in different organizations that I have worked at. It is being leveraged for EIP as well as writing event based code.
I worked for an organization that used Camel with Karaf (OSGi) and other organizations where Camel was used just as an open source framework.
Pros
EIP - enterprise integration patterns. Read events from queue, route to different processes and work on the messages.
REST APIs- Apache CXF is used and Camel could be used to provide endpoints.
Batches - Camel could be used to trigger batches and do large scale processing, using its throttling. It provides lots of connectors to work with.
Cons
I feel that Apache Camel is lacking a Spring XD like framework integration with big data capabilities.
Apache Camel seems to be very dependent on Spring.
Likelihood to Recommend
Camel is very suited where ever you want to use enterprise integration patterns like endpoint integration, routers, aggregators, splitters etc. Also Camel can be used for REST endpoints, designing event driven systems and integration with queues and it provides whole lot of connectors for integration with social etc.
VU
Verified User
Team Lead in Engineering (Financial Services company, 10,001+ employees)
Apache Camel is used by many departments at Cox Communications, but not the entire organization. It enables quick and scaleable integration of diverse business systems at Cox and reduces development effort and resources. Various Camel components are used and there is even a customized version of Camel Http4 component. Also Camel fits well in the existing infrastructure at Cox.
Pros
Camel has an easy learning curve. It is fairly well documented and there are about 5-6 books on Camel.
There is a large user group and blogs devoted to all things Camel and the developers of Camel provide quick answers and have also been very quick to patch Camel, when bugs are reported.
Camel integrates well with well known frameworks like Spring, and other middleware products like Apache Karaf and Servicemix.
There are over 150 components for the Camel framework that help integrate with diverse software platforms.
Camel is also good for creating microservices.
Cons
Camel features and documentation can get confusing to new users. Documentation can and should be improved. Also it would help if there are more tutorials available. Certification in Camel and related technologies like Servicemix and Karaf would also help.
The Camel infrastructure probably needs to be rebuilt (hopefully this may happen with version 3.0). At this time the latest production release of Camel (2.17.x) is not built with the latest version of Java (JDK 1.8).
Camel should also move towards becoming a "heavyweight" ESB product, though this may detract from some of its desirable features.
Likelihood to Recommend
Apache Camel is well suited for integration of existing software programs/components with newer and external systems. It supports SOAP and REST protocols pretty well. It was not designed to directly support front end systems. It has limited to non-existent support for Javascript. It is not suitable for creating simple standalone applications and meaningful deployment does require use of other frameworks like Spring/Karaf/JBoss.