Preface

With the widespread use of service-oriented architecture (SOA), the integration of different IT systems has gained a new relevance. The era of isolated business information systems—so-called silos or stove-pipe architectures—is finally over. It is increasingly rare to find applications developed for a specific purpose that do not need to exchange information with other systems. Furthermore, SOA is becoming more and more widely accepted as a standard architecture. Nearly all organizations and vendors are designing or implementing applications with SOA capability. SOA represents an end-to-end approach to the IT system landscape as the support function for business processes. Because of SOA, functions provided by individual systems are now available in a single standardized form throughout organizations, and even outside their corporate boundaries. In addition, SOA is finally offering mechanisms that put the focus on existing systems, and make it possible to continue to use them. Smart integration mechanisms are needed to allow existing systems, as well as the functionality provided by individual applications, to be brought together into a new fully functioning whole. For this reason, it is essential to transform the abstract concept of integration into concrete, clearly structured, and practical implementation variants.

The Trivadis Integration Architecture Blueprint indicates how integration architectures can be implemented in practice. It achieves this by representing common integration approaches, such as Enterprise Application Integration (EAI); Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL); event-driven architecture (EDA); and others, in a clearly and simply structured blueprint. It creates transparency in the confused world of product developers and theoretical concepts.

The Trivadis Integration Architecture Blueprint shows how to structure, describe, and understand existing application landscapes from the perspective of integration. The process of developing new systems is significantly simplified by dividing the integration architecture into process, mediation, collection and distribution, and communication layers. The blueprint makes it possible to implement application systems correctly without losing sight of the bigger picture: a high performance, flexible, scalable, and affordable enterprise architecture.

The background: Integration instead of isolation

Many enterprises are converting their operational structure from a functional hierarchy to a process-oriented, flexible organizational form. A characteristic feature of function-oriented organizations is a vertical division into independent functions. As a result, process chains are typically interrupted at departmental boundaries. This leads to the creation of so-called process islands, which often fall under different areas of responsibility and administration. If the departments in question are also geographically separated, the potential for communication problems increases. In general, the formation of these islands also has an impact on the IT landscape. In such companies, there are usually large numbers of redundant applications and data islands, and integrating them represents challenges from technical, social, and organizational perspectives.

Information transparency is normally not one of the strengths of this type of organization. Instead, the necessary knowledge about implemented process logic, and the accompanying data, is stored at a departmental level in a non-transparent and incomplete form. Redundant and inconsistent data is a common challenge/problem for these companies, and the process of integrating this data is time consuming as well as costly.

As a result, function-oriented organizations have difficulties in reacting in an appropriate, agile fashion to rapidly changing markets, customer requirements, and technologies. Process-oriented organizations, on the other hand, are considerably more flexible and, from an IT perspective, have the support of corresponding process-oriented concepts, such as SOA and EDA.

Process-oriented organizations need to be supported by process-oriented IT systems. Nowadays, the close links between operational processes and the underlying IT systems, make it necessary for the IT landscape to be closely tailored to the enterprise's technical requirements, and not to be regarded simply as an end in itself. In recent years, the term "Service-Oriented Architecture" has been widely used to describe a concept that puts process-oriented, technical services at the heart of the technical perspective, with the aim of offering reusable service components which allow for the implementation of business processes in a quick, cost-effective, and easily traceable way.

If the IT landscape of a process-oriented organization is considered as a whole, strategic aspects such as the implementation of an enterprise architecture (Bernus et al. 2003), a business motivation model (Hall et al. 2005), the Open Group Architecture Framework (Haren 2007), the Zachman Framework (Zachman 2007), or process architectures, come into play. Although this approach has a very small role in the concrete implementation of applications, there is, nevertheless, a common denominator here: the integration architecture. Putting an integrated solution (based on a blueprint) in place supports the systematic and strategic implementation of an enterprise architecture.

What this book covers

Despite the wide variety of useful and comprehensive books and other publications on the subject of integration, the approaches that they describe often lack practical relevance. The basic issue involves, on the one hand, deciding how to divide an integration solution into individual areas so that it meets the customer requirements, and on the other hand, how it can be implemented with a reasonable amount of effort. In this case, this means structuring it in such a way that standardized, tried-and-tested basic components can be combined to form a functioning whole, with the help of tools and products. For this reason, the Trivadis Integration Architecture Blueprint subdivides the integration layer into further layers. This kind of layering is not common in technical literature, but it has been proven to be very useful in practice. It allows any type of integration problem to be represented, including traditional ETL (Extract, Transform, and Load), classic EAI (Enterprise Application Integration), EDA (event-driven architecture), and grid computing. This idea is reflected in the structure of the book.

Chapter 1, Basic Principles, covers the fundamental integration concepts. This chapter is intended as an introduction for specialists who have not yet dealt with the subject of integration.

Chapter 2, Base Technologies, describes a selection of base technologies. By far the most important of these are transaction strategies and their implementation, as well as process modeling. In addition, Java EE Connector Architecture (JCA), Java Business Integration (JBI), Service Component Architecture (SCA), and Service Data Objects (SDO) are explained. Many other base technologies are used in real-life integration projects, but these go beyond the scope of this book.

Chapter 3, Integration Architecture Blueprint, describes the Trivadis Integration Architecture Blueprint. The process of layering integration solutions is fully substantiated, and each step is explained on the basis of the division of work between the individual layers. After this, each of the layers and their components are described.

Chapter 4, Implementation Scenarios, demonstrates how the Trivadis Integration Architecture Blueprint represents the fundamental integration concepts that have been described in Chapter 1. We will use the blueprint with its notation and visualization to understand some common integration scenarios in a mostly product-neutral form. We will cover traditional, as well as modern, SOA-driven integration solutions.

Chapter 5, Vendor Products for Implementing the Trivadis Blueprint, completes the book with a mapping of some vendor platforms to the Trivadis Integration Architecture Blueprint.

Appendix, References holds a list of all the referenced books and articles. It's a collection of additional important and interesting material covering modern SOA-driven as well as traditional integration solution.

What you need for this book

The book assumes a comprehensive understanding of SOA; however, previous knowledge of the Trivadis Blueprint is not necessary. Those less experienced in integration will benefit from the explanation of integration concepts and terminology, while the more advanced can move straight onto getting to grips with the Blueprint's structure.

Who this book is for

This book is intended for IT professionals, architects, managers, and project managers who are responsible for planning, designing, providing, and operating integration solutions.

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