we are building a distributed Java system (should be scalable ;-) ) that is connected only with JMS (ActiveMQ). I studied Spring Integration and I am not sure what the advantage would be if we use it. I think we are better off with using the JMS-Templeate from the Spring Core Project as we send only messages from a JavaService to another JavaService and so on.
3 Answers
Use Spring Integration (or any other framework) if you think the extra abstraction that it buys you is worth the cost. It should give you a more solid foundation on which to build your application. Software written by Spring is better than anything you or I would write from scratch.
All frameworks have a cost. There are additional dependencies. Sometimes greater abstraction can obscure too much.
You should prototype with and without Spring Integration to see if it's worth the cost.
If you're not a Spring user already, I'd recommend that you learn Spring before jumping into a big enterprise project.
If you need a really powerful system integration tier, then you should use Spring Integration - it's an additional level of abstraction which may help when your system will grow. With SI it's a matter of seconds to add new integration processing rule between two systems.
From the other hand, I've worked on some SpringIntegration+ActiveMQ project, and it was almost impossible to configure this broker to work with SI in the reliable way. So if you decide to use SI I'd recommend HornetQ as a JMS broker - this one works fine.