EAI
Approaches
There are a
number of
different
approaches
to achieving
enterprise
application
integration.
We have
identified
five
approaches
that we feel
are
typically
used to
integrate
existing
enterprise
information
systems with
enterprise
applications:
(1) Using a two-tier client-server approach - it is based on the two tier client-server model, and it is typical of applications that are not based on the Web.
(2) Using synchronous adapters- an adapter can expose either a synchronous or an asynchronous mode of communication between the client applications and the EIS. Adapters designed for this approach provide a synchronous request-reply communication model for use between an application and an EIS.
(3) Using asynchronous adapters - using this approach the application does not suspend its own processing while the remote function executes on the EIS.
(4) Using a
message
broker
approach -
also called
point-to-point
messaging,
involves one
application
sending a
message to a
message
queue. With
queue-based
communication,
a queue that
is
independent
from both
the sender
and receiver
applications
acts as a
message
buffer
between the
communicating
applications.
(5) Using an application server-based approach - there are message publishers, who produce messages, and message subscribers, who register their interest in particular messages.
Most of the businesses have
adopted the software solutions in their
early-days for competitive advantages. These
legacy software solutions, either the packaged
product or specifically developed to meet
specific organization needs in past, works well
even today individually, but they create
information islands.In most cases, each system produces redundant information, which successively creates inconsistent data across enterprise. This results in multiple data entry points, data duplication, and data isolation problems. Such organizations are in need of the Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) services to integrate these systems.
In some cases we use point-to-point or middleware based integration for providing EAI services to our clients. Point to point integration is used when number of system to be integrated are two to three. For integrating more than three systems using p2p integration becomes cumbersome and nonviable. Middleware based integration is better choice for large number of systems. Middleware provides generic interfaces with which all integrated applications pass messages to each other. Each interface defines a business process provided by an application.
Our EAI service offerings include following major integration services:
Platform Integration
Our solutions provide platform integration using constituents of Web Services, Services Oriented Architectures, Messaging, Object Request Broker, Remote Procedure Call and Publish and Subscribe based communication integration.
Data Integration
Our expertise in enterprise technology platforms such as .NET provides us with the platforms and tools to extract transform and manipulate data for our clients. In the context of XML, this also involves the greater task of metadata management.
Component Integration
Our integration includes integration at the level of the business logic, transaction management and application services using component architecture of SOAP/XML framework.
Application Integration
Our application integration services include building web services adapters or writing bespoke adapters on appropriate Middleware. Adapter-based integration forms the backbone for this level. Rules and content routing & event-based transactions and transformations are primary enablers in such integration.
Process Integration
Involves the process and workflow modeling approach to integration using Business Process Management based approach.