EAI
Enterprise Application Integration:
Definition:
EAI is a conceptual framework for an integration environment based on service-oriented
various services provided by business applications and other enterprise IT resources to enable the end-to-end business process capability. Seamlessness of the EAI
framework comes from its ability to allow various technologies and platforms to talk to each other and enable business applications to understand each other’s data formats. view of enterprise architecture. It allows seamless integration of
After reading so many complicated definitions of EAI on the web I conclude that EAI is the use of middleware to integrate the application programs, databases, and legacy systems involved in an organization's critical business processes.
Now what does middleware mean? It is software that mediates between an application program and a network. It manages the interaction between disparate
applications across the heterogeneous computing platforms.
The Object Request Broker (ORB), software that manages communication between objects, is an example of a middleware program.
Why EAI?
Now the question arises why do we need EAI at all? Well, to answer this my understanding is that in the past, many organizations built their systems based on the
most popular technology of the times without realizing that if there is a need to share information, how would it be achieved? There are a number of organizations
having different types of open and proprietary systems. Each with its own development tools, database, networking and operating system resulting in a heterogeneous
environment.
Modern Integration Approach:
With the use of EAI, an organization’s disparate internal applications should appear as one single unified application for the user with high performance.
Below mentioned are few of many advantages of EAI:
It helps in developing new applications by integrating the existing legacy and packaged applications of an organization.
To satisfy the business requirements of an organization and utilize the existing information system to the maximum.
EAI is best for easily integrating the disparate systems of the enterprise.
To utilize the real power of web that enables collaborative business-to-business e-commerce solutions.
It helps to share data and integrate business processes.
To increase the productivity.
To increase the user experience by implementing uniform user interface
The Challenges in EAI:
The task of integration is not as easy as one may think. There are a number of challenges to integration:
Different Application Development Tools.
Different Operating Systems.
Different Communication Protocols.
Knowledge of off-the-shelf products.
Multiple and inconsistent versions of common business data.
Different Computing Architectures.
Tight-coupling of application components.
Distributed databases and applications.
Legacy icebergs.
Resistance to change.
Types of Integration
An enterprise system comprises of business processes and data. So it becomes necessary to understand how these business processes are automated and the
importance of all business processes. This understanding will bring out a lot of useful hints for determining the amount of work needed, how much time it will take, which
business processes and data are to be integrated etc. Apart from this initial and first task of exploration, the primary knowledge needed is at what level, the integration process has to be performed in an enterprise application as there are mainly four levels, such as data level, application level, platform level, and Business Process level in an application
Platform Integration:is the integration on heterogeneous platforms. The platform integration can be achieved by synchronous and asynchronous messaging.
Data-level Integration : is the process and the techniques and technology of transferring data between data stores. This can be described as extracting information from one database, if need, processing that information, and updating the same in another database.Extraction is done through custom extraction and import programs and is used in application which do not require real time information.
Application-level Integration: custom or packaged applications expose some interfaces. Developers make use of these interfaces to access both business processes and simple information. Using these interfaces, we can bring many applications together, allowing them to share business logic and information. The only limitations of the application interfaces are the specific features and functions. This type of integration is most applicable for ERP applications, such as SAP, PeopleSoft and Bann, which will expose interfaces into their processes and data, the most preferred EAI technology for this type is message brokers as these can extract the information from one application, put it in a format understandable by the target application and transmit the information.
Business Process Integration:is designing business processes that synchronize internal operations of an organization. The business processes are not bypassed. The state of the Business Processes is maintained (e.g. workflow approvals etc.).A Business Process is viewed, monitored and controlled.
Publish-Subscribe EAI:Publish-subscribe is a system whereby messages generated by publishers are sent to a central messaging hub or broker that in
turn sends these messages to subscribers that have previously subscribed to receive some or all of these messages. This method is similar to hub-and-spoke, and
the main conceptual difference is that spokes in a hub-and-spoke system typically know the destination of the message, whereas in publish-subscribe, the publishers do not
have any knowledge of the subscribers.
Advantages:
Complete decoupling of source and target. Senders (Publishers) have no idea who subscribes to their messages; Receivers (Subscribers) have no idea who
generates their messages.Less complexity of integration. Applications on either side of the hub can be modified independently of each other and the hub performs any mapping
of documents between different application formats.More dynamicSubscribers can choose to subscribe and unsubscribe to messages and change their subscription properties at any time.
Disadvantages:
Two-way communications is harder. The hub has to correlate messages flowing between both parties.
Applications on both sides of the hub have to work well in a decoupled, event-driven fashion.
This is not it about the world of SOA and Middleware however, this is the first step to enter in it and there is lot more to learn about it.
No comments:
Post a Comment