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Types of Application Integration. IST 421 Fall 2006. Enterprise integration should enable organizations to become more agile and flexible. This means: Continuously monitor market demand Quickly respond by providing new products, services & information Quickly introduce new technologies
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Types of Application Integration IST 421 Fall 2006
Enterprise integration should enable organizations to become more agile and flexible. This means: Continuously monitor market demand Quickly respond by providing new products, services & information Quickly introduce new technologies Quickly modify business methods Lee, Siau, & Hong, Enterprise Integration with ERP and EAI, Communications Of the ACM, Vol. 46, Number 2, February 2003, 54-60.
Coupling • The act of bringing together • Binding logic with data; level of interdependency between the two components • Problems: • Creates one application and database out of many, each dependent on the other • Over time, a change to any system means a change to the coupled systems as well
Cohesion • Act of “sticking” together • Applications and databases are independent • Changes to any source system should not affect the others
Coupling vs. Cohesion • The goal is to have loosely coupled components so that there is little or no dependency • Integration solutions should be cohesive rather than coupled
Integration Models • An approach and configuration used to integrate software • It emphasizes one or two of the following attributes: • Simplicity of performing the integration • Reusability of integration for different configurations • Breadth of possible approaches to integration • Expertise required to perform integration
Integration Models • There are four general categories to consider for integration: • Information-oriented • Business process integration-oriented • Service-oriented • Portal-oriented
Information-Oriented • Information-oriented approach suggests that integration should occur between databases • Data replication • Data federation • Interface processing
Information-Oriented • Data Replication • Move data between two or more databases • Provide the infrastructure to exchange data • Advantages to this technique: • Simple • Low cost
Data-Level Integration • A variety of tools and data access middleware have been used to access and integrate at the data level • Batch file transfer • Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) • Database access middleware – provide connectivity to distributed databases • Data transformation – convert data from source database format into target database format; EBCDIC to ASCII
When to Use it • Combine data from multiple sources for analysis and decision making • Provide multiple applications with read access to a common source of information • Allow data to be extracted from one source and reformatted and updated in another
Data-Level Integration • Advantages: • Tools and techniques currently exist • Relatively easy • Requires no changes to the application logic or database structure • Provides access to a wider range of data • Allows data to be reused across other applications
Data-Level Integration • Disadvantages: • Need to rewrite business logic
Data-Level Example • Customer data from Sybase, IBM DB2, and SAP R/3 databases combined into a call center application. • Middleware would be used to access the data and integrate it into the call center application • Call center application would send a request to the middleware
Data-Level Example • Middleware would send the request to each of the databases in the correct format and wait for responses. Responses would be passed back to the call center application.
Other Data Source to Consider • Relational databases • IDMS • IMS • VSAM • ISAM • Flat files
Presentation Integration • One of the simplest models • Integration of multiple software components is accomplished through an application user interface • Application appears to be a single application although it may be accessing several legacy applications
When to Use it • Put a PC-based user interface on an existing terminal-based application • Provide a single application that is in fact a composite of several applications
Presentation Integration • Advantages: • Very easy and quick to do • Developer focuses on new presentation • Disadvantages: • Can have performance bottlenecks • Most limiting model
Information Integration • Integration solution set that works: • Identify the data • Catalog the data into a data dictionary • Reason for the data • Ownership • Format • Security • Role in the data structure • Build the enterprise metadata model • Used as a master guide for integrating
Information Integration • Maintain integrity issues • Data latency • Real time • Near time • One time