Why Enterprise Integration Patterns?
Enterprise integration is too complex to be solved with a simple 'cookbook' approach. Instead, patterns can provide guidance by documenting the kind of experience that usually lives only in architects' heads: they are accepted solutions to recurring problems within a given context. Patterns are abstract enough to apply to most integration technologies, but specific enough to provide hands-on guidance to designers and architects. Patterns also provide a vocabulary for developers to efficiently describe their solution.
Patterns are not 'invented'; they are harvested from repeated use in practice. If you have built integration solutions, it is likely that you have used some of these patterns, maybe in slight variations and maybe calling them by a different name. The purpose of this site is not to "invent" new approaches, but to present a coherent collection of relevant and proven patterns, which in total form an integration pattern language.
Despite the 700+ pages, our book covers only a fraction of patterns (and the problems to be solved) in the integration space. The current patterns focus on Messaging, which forms the basis of most other integration patterns. We have started to harvest more patterns but are realizing (once again) how much work documenting these patterns really is. So please stay tuned.
Messaging Patterns
We have documented 65 messaging patterns, organized as follows:
https://www.enterpriseintegrationpatterns.com/patterns/messaging/index.html