Transcript Overview on Integration Technologies

Overview on Integration Technologies
By
Sayed Ahmed
Just ETC
Some of My Work in the Area of Application Integration
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Used RMI to write a distributed reservation system
◦ Along with wrote a flow controller to distribute the request to the associated server
or database
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Used Java middleware such as OSGi and Knoplerfish to integrate a
location service to outer world
Was part of a research team working on the topmost level of application
integration using SOA and developing/defining service composition
framework
Wrote prototype software integrating Offline Airlines Reservation Systems
with Airlines GDS systems
Wrote scripts to provide integrating among systems such as
telecommunication billing software, telecommunications helpdesk software,
and resources such as domain and hosting management software
Wrote SOAP applications to list items in Ebay.
Used SOAP to grab product list from Commission Junction
Integrated Moneris Payment Processing System in SAP-Webshop
Integration of Mira-Serv Payment processing (based on Web-Services) into
web-applications
What is Application Integration?
It’s a strategic approach for binding many
information systems together. The binding can be
at the service level and/or the information level.
Integration makes it possible that the associated
applications can exchange information and
leverage processes in real time.
 Forms of Integration
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Internal Application Integration
Enterprise Application Integration (EAI)
External Application Integration
Business to Business Application Integration
However, inter- and intra company integration
solutions share many common patterns
Is Application Integration a New Concept?
Not really, as businesses always tried to interchange
information among multiple systems and software
 However, the need for integration has risen along
with the technologies to integrate have improved and
changed over the time
 What is new?
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◦ “understanding the need for application integration solutions to
support strategic business initiatives going forward”
◦ Moving from information oriented integration to service
oriented integration
◦ Service oriented integration is also not a new concept but
the way it is being implemented or utilized is new (such as
UDDI)
 Downside: (SOA) Change the source and target applications or
create new ones
What is the concept behind integration
Technologies?
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Types of Application Integration
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Information Oriented
Service Oriented
Business Process Integration Oriented
Portal Oriented
Information-Oriented
Argument: Integration should occur
between the databases
 Primary points of Integration:
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◦ Databases
◦ Information Producing APIs
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Approaches
◦ Data Replication
◦ Data Federation
◦ Interface Processing
Data Replication
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Move data between two or more databases
◦ May need infrastructure to exchange data
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Data Federation
◦ Integration of multiple databases and database models
into a single unified view of the databases
◦ Places a layer on top of all associated databases
◦ Unlike replication, this solution does not require
changes to the source or target applications
◦ Interface Processing
 Focuses APIs to integrate both custom and packaged
applications
 Need and interest in ERP software integration have made this
the most exciting integration sector
Interface Integration
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Tools from Brokers
◦ Provide Adaptors
◦ Interface processing makes it possible to
integrate SAP and Oracle application easily by
counting the differences between schema,
content, and application semantics
◦ Downside: Little regard for business logic and
methods.
 Hence, service oriented solutions probably make
better choice
Business Process Integration-Oriented
Provides a layer consisting of a set of
easily defined and centrally managed
processes on top of existing sets of
processes
 It’s the science and mechanism of
managing the movement of data and
execute the right process at the right
event
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Service-Oriented
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Allows applications to share common
business logic and methods
◦ Accomplishment:
 Define methods that can be shared
 Provide infrastructure so that such methods can be
shared i.e. web-services
 Methods can be shared by keeping them in a central
server, accessing among inter applications through
distributed objects, or through standard webservices
Portal Oriented
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Allows us to view multiple applications
both internal and external through a
single user interface or application
◦ It adapts the user interface of each system to
a common user interface
Some Notes
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Packaged application interfaces are primarily
information oriented (IOAI)
◦ SAP uses hybrid integration– Information+service
oriented
◦ Most Application integrations usually leverage
information-oriented integration
◦ IOAI can also be integrated with other types.
Eventually, most application integration usually
leverage all types of integration mechanisms
◦ Integration is being happening in this way for about 30
years
◦ Challenges
 Architects and developers need to understand all the systems
involved clearly
IOAI Notes
IOAI allows data movement between sources and
target systems.
 The data can come from anywhere
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◦ Databases, API (SAP-BAPI)s, or an Embedded Device
◦ In IOAI, the application may not be required to be
changed, however – IOAI is not simple.
◦ When the systems are pretty different, it can get tricky
◦ “IOAI makes sense for more complex problem domains as
well, domains such as moving data between traditional
mainframe, file-oriented databases and more modern,
relational databases; relational databases to object
databases; multidimensional databases to mainframe
databases; or any combination of these”
IOAI Implementation
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IOAI considers Data Producers and Data Consumers
The producers and consumers can be
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Database
Application
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User Interface
Embedded Device
Databases are the natural points of integration
SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle, and Siebel have implemented IOAI integration concepts
Approaching IOAI
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Identify the data
Catalog the data
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Build the enterprise metadata model
When to update/move data among systems
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Real Time
Near Time
One Time
Metadata Model
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Logical
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Physical
IOAI Implementation
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Logical
◦ creating an architecture for all data stores that
are independent of a physical database model,
development tool, or particular DBMS
◦ At the heart of the logical model is the Entity
Relationship Diagram
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Strategy
◦ Integrate two or three databases and make the
integration to be successful, then move to
integrate other databases
Application Integration Technologies
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Middleware
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Point to point Middleware
Many to many Middleware
Connection oriented Middleware
Connectionless Middleware
Request response middleware
RPCs, MOM, Distributed Objects, Database oriented
middleware, Transactional Middleware (TP Monitors, Application
Servers), Integration Servers
RPCs are synchronous
Message Oriented Middleware
Distributed Objects
Database oriented
 Call Level Interface
 Native Database Middleware
Integration Technologies
RPCs are slow, but their blocking nature
provides the best data integrity control
 Most users typically never see middleware
plumbing, as they do application
development and database products.
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Middleware and Integration
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Transactional middleware
◦ A good match for application integration
◦ Provides a centralized server capable of
processing information from many different
resources, such as databases and applications
◦ Provides scalability, fault tolerance, and an
architecture that centralizes application
processing
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Message Oriented
◦ Message brokers or traditional message-oriented
middleware are better tools for the simple
sharing of information between applications.
Application Servers
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Ideal for Portal-Oriented Application Integration
◦ Application servers take many existing enterprise
systems and expose them through a single user
interface, typically a Web browser
◦ For example, application servers can easily externalize
information contained in mainframes, ERP
applications, and even middleware without a user
interface
◦ As a result, developers can gain all the application
development capabilities they require, including a
programming language and an integrated development
environment. This makes application servers ideal for
Portal-Oriented Application Integration.
Enterprise JavaBeans and COM+
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Enterprise JavaBeans
◦ Nearly every application server that uses transactional
component-type architecture looks to employ EJB as the
enabling standard
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Transactional COM+ (Using App Center)
◦ In a strategy similar to the one employed with EJBs,
Microsoft plans to support transactionality through
COM+ and App Center
◦ The sophisticated application server architecture of
Windows XP is a notable plus, as are the hundreds of
application development tools available for the Windows
2000 platform.
◦ However, this may very well be a comment more about
what runs on Windows XP than how well something runs.
Transactional COM+
◦ Component-Dynamic Load Balancing within
Windows 2000 supports up to eight connected
application servers (nodes).
 This enables application developers to process one or
many COM+ components across a cluster using App
Center Server.
 An App Center Server is a Microsoft Transaction Server
for transaction support and a Microsoft Message Queue
(MSMQ) server for message queuing support all rolled
into a single distributed COM+ processing environment.
 App Center acts as a router, using server response time
to find the least-busy server to create COM+
components for processing.
 As a result, it balances the load.
Message-Oriented Middleware
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In Situations
◦ When bandwidth that can support RPCs is
absent,
◦ Or in a situation where a server cannot be
depended upon to always be up and running
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Message-oriented middleware may be the
better choice for an application
integration project
Distributed Objects
What Works? Distributed objects work best
in application integration problem domains
where a distributed computing model is in
use and a large number of common methods
need to be shared
 For example, an enterprise may have the
following major applications:
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◦ Customer tracking system (Company A)
◦ Logistics system (Company A)
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Failed distributed object projects outnumber
the successes. That's the reality. No hype.
What is Database-Oriented Middleware?
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Going Native
◦ In addition to ODBC, JDBC, and other
database translation interfaces, many other
native database oriented middleware products
exist.
◦ These are APIs provided by a database vendor
or some third party with access to a
particular database
Database Gateways
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Database Gateways
◦ Database gateways (also known as SQL gateways) are APIs
that use a single interface to provide access to most
databases that reside on many different types of platforms .
◦ They are similar to virtual database middleware products,
providing developers with access to any number of
databases residing in environments typically difficult to
access, such as a mainframe.
◦ For example, using an ODBC interface and a database
gateway, developers can access data that resides in a DB2
database on a mainframe, in an Oracle database running on
a minicomputer, and in a Sybase database running on a
UNIX server.
◦ The developer simply makes an API call, and the database
gateway does all the work
Database Gateway
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EDA/SQLEDA/SQL is a wonderful generalpurpose database gateway for several
reasons
Among them is its ability to work with most
database servers and platforms
bridging many enterprises where dozens of
servers might be running on dozens of
different platforms, all needing to be
accessed from a single application—a perfect
fit for application integration
Java-Based Middleware Standards and Application
Integration
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Will create another presentation on this.
References
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Next Generation Application
Integration: From Simple
Information to Web Services
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By: David S. Linthicum
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Pub. Date: August 15, 2003
Print ISBN-10: 0-201-84456-7
Print ISBN-13: 978-0-201-84456-6
Pages in Print Edition: 512