Akka with Camel ... Is Akka Missing the Point?

["kraythe ." <kr...@gmail.com>]

As many know I have been using Camel quite a while and I have also been a
fan of Scala for a while. Well one of the primary server side components
for scala is Akka. Akka says they have camel integration and if you look at
their web page, there is indeed documentation[1]. What I am a bit baffled
by is the way they integrate camel into Akka and I was hoping some user of
both could explain the reasoning behind it.

As I understand it, you can create Akka actors that are consumers and
producers. The examples they post are of 20 line programs that create an
actor and recieve a message from jetty and process it to a log to console.
However, with camel DSL I can do that in one line. So I am missing where is
the benefit here.

It seems that Akka would like to deprecate the camel DSL, which is insanely
powerful, in favor of their own reinvention of the wheel. Just does't make
any sense to me.

Akka as a system could be a great host for Camel routes but I don't
understand the way they are going about the integration and how it provides
any value. It seems to me they would be much better off keeping the camel
DSL and weaving together Akka actors into the DSL. Sure, I know you can do
.to("actor:<stuff>") in your route right now and that seems to be a much
better use of the camel paradigm. Anyone help me out here on the thought
process and, more importantly, the value?

[1] http://doc.akka.io/docs/akka/snapshot/scala/camel.html

*Robert Simmons Jr. MSc. - Lead Java Architect @ EA*
*Author of: Hardcore Java (2003) and Maintainable Java (2012)*
*LinkedIn: **http://www.linkedin.com/pub/robert-simmons/40/852/a39
<http://www.linkedin.com/pub/robert-simmons/40/852/a39>*