Enterprise Integration Patterns: A Practical Guide

Enterprise integration is the practice of connecting systems that were never designed to work together. Every organisation with more than a handful of applications faces this challenge, and the difference between a resilient integration architecture and a fragile web of point-to-point connections comes down to applying the right integration patterns to the right problems.

The foundational patterns remain as relevant as when Gregor Hohpe first catalogued them: message channels for decoupled communication, message routers for conditional distribution, message translators for format conversion, and message endpoints for connecting applications to the messaging infrastructure. Layered on top are modern implementations: API gateways for external-facing integration, event-driven architectures for real-time data propagation, and saga patterns for distributed transaction management.

At redskios, we select integration patterns based on your specific requirements: data volume, latency tolerance, consistency guarantees, and operational complexity budget. A middleware solution using Azure Service Bus and RabbitMQ is appropriate for high-volume, asynchronous workloads. A synchronous REST API layer is better for low-latency, request-response interactions. The skill is matching the pattern to the problem, not defaulting to the most fashionable architecture.