One distinction not mentioned by Ben and Petter is that properties are safely stored for the entire duration of the processing of the message in Camel. In contrast, headers are part of the message protocol, and may not be propagated during routing. For example, JMS has limitations what you can store as headers etc. You … Read more
In practice, they are very similar, but a Processor is more limited than a Bean. I generally use a Processor for simple use cases that just interact with the Exchange. Also, inline processors are a great way to interact without having to create a separate class. Beans provide more flexibility and also support a true … Read more
It is now 2016 and a lot has changed since the question was initially asked, so I’d like to revisit it for new viewers. Strategically speaking Apache Camel has stayed true to its roots and has not evolved into a heavyweight nor fully-fledged runtime platform. It is versatile and modular, and can run: Embedded in … Read more