What is Enterprise Integration Patterns?

Enterprise integration patterns (EIP) is a catalog of design patterns for developing systems to integrate new and existing software in a business environment which is a book by Gregor Hohpe and Bobby Woolf. It describes 65 patterns structured into 9 categories for the use of enterprise application integration and message-oriented middleware in the form of patterns and includes an icon-based pattern language sometimes called GregorGrams.

Enterprise Integration Patterns example

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Notation of Enterprise Integration Patterns

Message Routing

Aggregator

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Aggregator

How do we combine the results of individual, but related messages so that they can be processed as a whole?

Composed Message Processor

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Composed message processor

How can you maintain the overall message flow when processing a message consisting of multiple elements, each of which may require different processing?

Content-Based Router

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Content-based router

How do we handle a situation where the implementation of a single logical function (e.g., inventory check) is spread across multiple physical systems?

Dynamic Router

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Dynamic router

How can you avoid the dependency of the router on all possible destinations while maintaining its efficiency?

Message Broker

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Message broker

How can you decouple the destination of a message from the sender and maintain central control over the flow of messages?

Message Filter

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Message filter

How can a component avoid receiving uninteresting messages?

Process Manager

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Process manager

How do we route a message through multiple processing steps when the required steps may not be known at design-time and may not be sequential?

Recipient List

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Recipient list

How do we route a message to a list of (static or dynamically) specified recipients?

Resequencer

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Resequencer

How can we get a stream of related but out-of-sequence messages back into the correct order?

Routing Slip

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Routing slip

How do we route a message consecutively through a series of processing steps when the sequence of steps is not known at design-time and may vary for each message?

Splitter

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Splitter

How can we process a message if it contains multiple elements, each of which may have to be processed differently?

Message Transformation

Claim Check

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Claim check

How can we reduce the data volume of the message sent across the system without sacrificing information content?

Content Enricher

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Content enricher

How do we communicate with another system if the message originator does not have all the required data items available?

Content Filter

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Content filter

How do you simplify dealing with a large message, when you are interested only in a few data items?

Normalizer

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Normalizer

How do you process messages that are semantically equivalent, but arrive in a different format?

Messaging Channels

Point to Point Channel

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Point-to-Point channel

How can the caller be sure that exactly one receiver will receive the document or perform the call?

Publish-Subscribe Channel

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Publish subscribe channel

How can the sender broadcast an event to all interested receivers?

Channel Adapter

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Channel adapter

How can you connect an application to the messaging system so that it can send and receive messages?

Dead Letter Channel

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Dead letter channel

What will the messaging system do with a message it cannot deliver?

Messaging Bridge

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Messaging bridge

How can multiple messaging systems be connected so that messages available on one are also available on the others??

Message Bus

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Message bus

What is an architecture that enables separate applications to work together, but in a de-coupled fashion such that applications can be easily added or removed without affecting the others?

Messaging Endpoints

Competing Consumers

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Competing consumers

How can a messaging client process multiple messages concurrently?

Durable Subscriber

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Durable subscriber

How can a subscriber avoid missing messages while it’s not listening to them?

Event-Driven Consumer

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Event driven consumer

How can an application automatically consume messages as they become available?

Message Dispatcher

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Message dispatcher

How can multiple consumers on a single channel coordinate their message processing?

Messaging Gateway

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Messaging gateway

How do you encapsulate access to the messaging system from the rest of the application?

Polling Consumer

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Polling consumer

How can an application consume a message when the application is ready?

Selective Consumer

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Selective consumer

How can a message consumer select which messages it wishes to receive?

Service Activator

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Service activator

How can an application design a service to be invoked both via various messaging technologies and via non-messaging techniques?

Transactional Client

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Transactional  client

How can a client control its transactions with the messaging system?

Messaging Systems

Message Router

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Message router

How can you decouple individual processing steps so that messages can be passed to different filters depending on a set of conditions?

Message Channel

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Message channel

How does one application communicate with another using messaging?

Message Endpoint

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Message endpoint

How does an application connect to a messaging channel to send and receive messages?

Message

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Message

How can two applications connect by a message channel exchange a piece of information?

Message Translator

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Message translator

How can systems using different data formats communicate with each other using messaging?

System Management

Control Bus

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Control bus

How can we effectively administer a messaging system that is distributed across multiple platforms and a wide geographic area?

Detour

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Detour

How can you route a message through intermediate steps to perform validation, testing or debugging functions?

WireTap

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Wire tap

How do you inspect messages that travel on a point-to-point channel?

Message Construction

Event Message

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Event message

How can messaging be used to transmit events from one application to another?

Message Expiration

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Message expiration

How can a sender indicate when a message should be considered stale and thus shouldn’t be processed?

Return Address

Enterprise Integration Patterns symbol: Return address

How does a replier know where to send the reply?