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Information System Integration

Article · June 2000

DOI: 10.1145/336460.336472 · Source: DBLP

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 Wilhelm Hasselbring

INFORMATION SYSTEM
INTEGRATION
F
or information systems, it is increasingly technology, which requires interdisciplinary cooper-
difficult to draw a line around an appli- ation between the application domain and informa-
cation system and say that you own and tion technology.
control it. For example, as value chains The technology architecture layer defines the infor-
extend beyond enterprises, supplier and mation and communication infrastructure. At this
customer systems become part of each layer, IT is challenged to achieve the business
other’s information architectures. Fur- requirements.
thermore, in many application areas, data is distrib- It is important to realize that Figure 1 does not ade-
uted over a multitude of heterogeneous, often quately reflect the reality. In practice, the business
autonomous information systems, and an exchange architectures of the individual organizational units
of data among them is not easy. Figure 1 illustrates cannot be treated in isolation: the business processes
such a vertical fragmentation of organizational units. of cooperating units are highly interrelated and should
Each unit may be structured within three architec- be handled as such. Figure 2 illustrates this situation.
tural layers, as described in the following. Certain kinds of interactions among computer sys-
The business architecture layer defines the organi- tems resemble interactions among people; thus, it is
zational structure and the workflows for business important to consider all levels when integrating those
rules and processes. It is a conceptual level expressed systems. A horizontal integration of the layers is
in terms meaningful to actual users of application required to support the business processes effectively,
systems. as indicated here.
The application architecture layer defines the Interorganizational processes. At this layer, busi-
actual implementation of the business concepts in ness engineering [1] seeks to organize a commercial
terms of enterprise applications. At this layer, it is undertaking in a competitive way, whereby business
the central goal to provide the “glue” between the processes cut horizontally through the traditional
application domain described in the business archi- organization structure. Business process reengineering
tecture and the technical solutions described in the aims at continuously improving those processes.
technology architecture. Research in information To support the intraorganizational business
JAMES GARY

systems aims at filling the gap between business and processes within organizations effectively, the existing

COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM June 2000/Vol. 43, No. 6 33

 Figure 1. Vertical fragmentation Enterprise application integration. The goal is to
of organization units. integrate independent enterprise resource planning
(ERP) systems at this layer. This is usually achieved by
Business Business means of some kind of messaging services. Even the
Architecture Architecture SAP R/3 approach, which aims at enterprise integra-
tion via one single database (no borders between enter-
Application Application
Architecture Architecture prise units), acknowledges the fact that messaging
services are required for integrating autonomous ERP
Technology Technology systems, both within and across enterprises [4]. TSI
Architecture Architecture
Software’s Mercator product (www.mercator.com), for
Organizational Unit Organizational Unit instance, specializes in pre-built application adapters,
data transformations, and messaging services among
the ERP systems SAP R/3 and PeopleSoft.
information systems must be integrated. This is The deployment of ERP systems often requires
already a nontrivial task, particularly if heterogeneous reengineering the business processes to align with the
information systems exist (legacy systems). To allow, ERP system. However, it is usually unacceptable to
for instance, for electronic supply chains, interorgani- require the business to change to the applications’ func-
zational processes have to be supported, whereby the tionality; instead the information architecture should
involved information systems are highly autonomous, align with the business organization. SI and compo-
making the integration process an even more chal- nentization aim at supporting the business processes,
lenging task. while preserving the investments in (legacy) systems.

IT Disciplines involved in Information SI

or participatory development involving end When it comes to SI, coordination is required for
F users, applications should be built incrementally
using techniques such as Rapid Application Develop-
managing shared resources and dependencies among
activities in and across systems; it is obvious we can
ment (RAD), Joint Application Design (JAD), and learn from the trade-offs between different disci-
Prototyping. This special section, however, primarily plines involved in SI. Malone and Crowston [2] already
concentrates on the interdisciplinary nature of SI emphasized that the study of coordination is relevant
among the different disciplines in IT, and discusses for such dissimilar disciplines as computer science,
end-user involvement merely as a side issue. The linguistics, and operations research. Resource alloca-
articles in this special section are organized accord- tion, for instance, is widely studied in economics,
ing to specific application domains. A variety of IT organization theory, as well as in IT.
disciplines are studying problems and solutions for Database systems. Problems of coupling and inte-
information SI: grating heterogeneous database and information sys-
tems have been addressed in the database area for
Parallel and distributed systems. Research in oper- some time. While research on parallel and distributed
ating systems, computer networks, and parallel pro- systems emphasizes the integration of computational
gramming systems concentrates, to a great extent, on components, research on database systems is more
managing the coexistence and coordination of multi- concerned with the integration of data. Federated
ple concurrent activities. In these areas, communica- database systems, for instance, approach the inte-
tion among system components and their gration of heterogeneous databases by means of
synchronization are common problems to be solved. schema integration. However, when it comes to man-
With parallel programming, for instance, paral- aging transactions over multiple local systems, for
lelism is used as a coordination mechanism and, instance for executing transactional workflows, the
accordingly, programming is divided into two separate problems to be solved are often very similar to those
activities: a sequential language that can be used to that arise in parallel and distributed systems. These
build single-threaded computations; whereas a coor- similarities sometimes cause the reinvention of tech-
dination language is used to coordinate the activity of niques that have already been elaborated in other
those computations. Thus parallel programming con- disciplines.
sists of putting together components and letting them Software engineering. When it comes to SI, we deal
cooperate. with complex systems of systems. Software engineer-

34 June 2000/Vol. 43, No. 6 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM

 Applications need to understand the data provided Figure 2. Horizontal integration to
by other applications; for instance, a common under- support the business processes.
standing is required of what a person’s bank account
is. Standardization of message formats and message
Inter-
content plays an important role in this context. Business
Architecture
Business
Architecture Organizational
Processes
Meanwhile, XML (www.w3.org) is emerging as the Enterprise
Application Application
standard for defining the syntax of data structures to Architecture Architecture
Application
Integration
be transferred over the Internet. In order to provide
Technology Technology Middleware
interoperability across implementations, the concrete Architecture Architecture Integration

syntax and the semantics of standardized messages Organizational Unit Organizational Unit
must be defined. Traditional EDI (Electronic Data
Interchange) is often being reexamined to define the
meaning of the transferred data, and XML is
employed as the practical foundation used to structure Enterprise Application Integration also addresses a
this information. semantic level.
Middleware integration. At this layer, the tech- The borderline between Enterprise Application and
niques for building componentized information sys- middleware integration cannot always be pinpointed
tems with state-of-the-art infrastructures such as precisely. For instance, the Object Management Archi-
CORBA, database gateways, and transaction moni- tecture of the OMG defines the Object Request Bro-
tors, are employed. Middleware integration addresses ker, which can be deployed for middleware
the syntactical level (“plumbing” and “wiring”) while integration, and also high-level services (such as busi-

ing is concerned with the systematic development of Artificial intelligence. Mediator and multiagent
such complex systems. Work in this area deals with architectures are developed in this area to achieve the
questions of adequate software architectures and integration of heterogeneous information sources by
design patterns for complex systems, composition of means of (distributed) artificial intelligence tech-
software components, the proper use and extension of niques [6]. Usually, the integration is managed
middleware tools, and methodological approaches for through the mediators and agents by means of logical
the integration process. rules employing artificial intelligence techniques.
With component-based development, it is Computations have to be coordinated, and distributed
expected that software systems may be created and access to data/knowledge bases and ontologies is
maintained at lower costs and with increased stabil- essential for the deployment of mediator and multia-
ity through reuse of approved components in flexible gent architectures.
software architectures [5]. When those components Multimedia systems. Often, the information to be
are information systems, a frequent requirement is integrated for multimedia systems consists of com-
that the systems to be integrated are to remain posite objects comprising different media components
autonomous. Preexisting applications (legacy sys- such as text, video, image, or audio (for example, for
tems) must still be able to use their local data with- digital libraries). Techniques for multimedia systems,
out modification. In this way (financial) investment such as MIME or the XML-based synchronized multime-
can be preserved and a smooth migration toward dia language SMIL (www.w3.org/AudioVideo), are
modern systems can take place. The notion of “feder- required in that context.
ation” is originally a political term: several states join Multimedia systems are often distributed over
together and constitute a federal system in which computer networks. The Web, which utilizes the Inter-
each state retains its autonomy up to a certain net, is an example of a huge, but not well-organized
degree. This idea of federation can be transferred to multimedia system. With respect to SI, content-
the integration of preexisting information systems, descriptive metadata relating to the meaning of the
which could have been developed independently actual multimedia objects plays an important role in
(autonomously) within different departments of an distributed multimedia systems. For realizing multime-
enterprise. Here, considerable overlap with research dia systems, techniques for distributed systems,
on databases and parallel/distributed systems databases, software engineering, and artificial intelli-
exists. gence are essential. c

COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM June 2000/Vol. 43, No. 6 35

ness objects) that address Enterprise Application Inte- while retaining legacy applications and legacy technol-
gration. ogy as reasonably as possible. The speed of business
The integration of heterogeneous systems is a and technology change does not allow time for total
research topic for different disciplines in IT, and replacement, therefore, evolution and migration of
includes the consideration of the requirements of the legacy and new application systems is required. Migra-
specific application domains involved. Therefore, the tion and evolution aim at protecting existing invest-
study of SI is highly interdisciplinary, as discussed in ments and enabling rapid response to the changing
the sidebar “IT Disciplines Involved in Information user requirements. For managing the evolution of
SI.” Despite the differences among the various disci- those complex systems, it is necessary to deal with
plines involved, the work on SI focuses to a great change on the organizational level, group collabora-
extent on three issues: autonomy, heterogeneity, and tion level, and system level in a coherent manner [3].
distribution, as discussed in the sidebar “Dimensions SI plays an important role in such application areas
of Information SI.” as health care, digital libraries, e-commerce, telecom-
There is often no time and justification to replace munications, Web applications, and data warehousing,
legacy systems. New functionality must be integrated to name just a few. This special section presents the var-
with other packages, existing applications, and data ious problems and solutions for SI from different per-
sources. Therefore, SI aims at building applications spectives, with discussion of the specific requirements
that are adaptable to business and technology changes of selected application domains. The articles in this

Dimensions of Information SI
espite the differences among the various dis-
D ciplines involved, the work on information SI
focuses to a great extent on three issues: auton-
Figure 3. Problem dimensions for SI: Autonomy,
heterogeneity, and distribution.The dashed
arrows indicate some general approaches to
omy, heterogeneity, and distribution as illustrated
manage these issues.
in Figure 3: distribution

• Complex “systems of systems” are characterized

proxy services

by a controlled and sometimes limited integration

of individual autonomous systems. Often, there
are conflicts between requirements of integration
and autonomy.
common models, structures, standards; wrappers
• Causes for heterogeneity are different database s
ge
management and operating systems utilized, as h an heterogeneity
a lc
well as the design autonomy among component on
i
at
systems. n iz
ga y
or
• Much of the distribution is due to the existence of
n om
individual systems before overall systems are to
au
built (integration of legacy systems).

Usually, SI aims at approaching the origin in this unmarshals (de-linearizes) them, and calls the true
system of coordinates in Figure 3. Typical solutions for local callee. The callee procedure itself, just as the
the respective dimensions are: caller, follows local calling conventions and is
Distribution. Proxy services are an established unaware of being called remotely. The marshaling and
technique for “hiding” distribution. The idea of unmarshaling are responsible for converting data val-
remote procedure calls (RPCs), for instance, is to ues from their local representations to some interme-
replace the local callee’s and the remote caller’s ends diate network format, and vice versa. The stubs can
of the procedure calls by stubs. The caller uses strictly be regarded as proxies for the corresponding local
local calling conventions giving him the illusion to call procedures.
a local callee. In reality, it calls a (generated) stub The Objects Management Group’s CORBA architec-
that marshals (linearizes) the parameters and sends ture, for instance, extends remote procedure calls to
them to the remote end. At that end, another stub remote method calls in an object-oriented setting
(sometimes called skeleton) receives the parameters, (www.omg.org).

36 June 2000/Vol. 43, No. 6 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM

 {
special section can be categorized according to the SI aims at building applications that
three-layer architecture of information SI, namely the
business, application, and technology layers. are adaptable to business and
Yang and Papazoglou address the business architec-
ture layer in their article, discussing the integration at technology changes while retaining
the level of the business architecture making reference
to business-to-business e-commerce. To make e-com- legacy applications and legacy
merce possible, it is necessary to let the information
systems of dissimilar organizations cooperate. The arti- technology as reasonably as possible.
cle is a survey in which relevant problems are presented
and their possible solutions are discussed in the context
of a layered strawman reference architecture for inter- information systems, integration is a decisive factor to
operation support in e-commerce. The Business Infor- successfully support the work within hospitals as well
mation Systems point of view to SI is presented, with as for the cooperation among the various health care
achievement of business goals an important issue. providers. The article describes several standards that
The article by Grimson et al. focuses on the appli- have been defined and are being defined, and their
cation architecture, discussing the problem of integrat- actual use in practice. Since this article addresses the
ing electronic patient records. For health care application layer, the integration among ERP packages

Heterogeneity. Due to the independent develop- on the latter semantics issues, partially because
ment and deployment of component systems, hetero- semantic problems are often not noticed until the
geneity occurs at various levels and for various basic access problems are solved.
reasons. On a technical level, heterogeneity comes Autonomy. Autonomy of component systems is a
from different hardware platforms, operating systems, critical issue for SI. Components may be autonomous in
database management systems, and programming their design, meaning their developers chose the cov-
languages. On a conceptual level, heterogeneity comes ered universe of discourse, programming models, nam-
from different programming and data models as well as ing concepts, and so forth. The systems may also be
different understanding and modeling of the same autonomous with respect to communication and exe-
real-world concepts, for example, the use of the same cution, meaning that a component may independently
name to denote different concepts (homonyms) decide how to handle interaction with the outside
and the use of different names for the same concept world.
(synonyms). The feasibility of reducing autonomy by technical
Bridging heterogeneity is one of the most difficult means is highly limited. Usually, autonomy can only be
tasks of SI. Typical techniques for overcoming hetero- reduced in connection with organizational changes.
geneity are the use of common programming and data The implications of, for instance, enforcing a two-
models, and similar structuring of information. phase commit over several local databases by means
Domain-specific standards are useful for defining the of a transaction monitor may be unacceptable to the
meaning of information to be shared among dissimilar corresponding organizational departments due to the
organizations. Wrappers that provide unified interfaces impact on the local system’s execution performance.
are an established technique for integrating legacy As illustrated in Figure 3, SI aims at approaching the
systems. origin in this system of coordinates. However, it is not
The fact that autonomy of a source means not only always possible—and even not always reasonable—
having heterogeneity of access and representation attempting to eliminate autonomy, heterogeneity, or
(computer system, operating system, database sys- distribution entirely. For instance, distribution is a
tem, interface conventions, and so forth), but also matter of fact when connecting systems of dissimilar
content heterogeneity (partial overlap, different orga- organizations. Autonomy allows for flexible architec-
nization, differences in term semantics) should be tures whereby individual subsystems are able to adapt
understood. For instance, the address of a person may themselves to changing requirements. By allowing for
be an attribute of person objects in one system and an heterogeneity, organizational departments may
entity with its own identity in another system. More choose the optimal systems for achieving their individ-
work has been done on the former technical issues than ual business goals. c

COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM June 2000/Vol. 43, No. 6 37

 and other applications is discussed in the context of information systems; thus the emphasis is on coping
Enterprise Application Integration. The Health Infor- with the dynamics in the operational information
matics point of view to SI is presented; to achieve sources.
semantic interoperability, health care-specific stan- The article by Adam et al. focuses on integration of
dards play an important role. digital libraries and presents a survey of the field,
The articles by Rundensteiner et al. and Adam et addressing CORBA, mediators, and agent architec-
al. address the technology architecture. Runden- tures. For digital libraries, the integration of information
steiner et al. discuss the technology architecture, mak- from different sources is a central problem to be solved.
ing reference to data warehouses offering a rich view The integration of multimedia objects is an important
of the field. To build data warehouses that aim at sup- issue in that context. The similarities of the two tech-
porting decision support systems, it is a basic require- nology articles are evident when comparing their figures
ment to integrate the data from operational that illustrates the respective system architectures.
It should be noted that
within this special section not
all possible facets of informa-
tion SI can be covered, but I
hope you will enjoy reading
the articles in this section and
derive some conceptions bene-
ficial to your own work. c

Wilhelm Hasselbring
([email protected]) is an assistant
professor at the Infolab in the
Department of Information
Management and Computer Science,
Tilburg University, The Netherlands.

References
1. Jacobson, I., Ericsson, M., and Jacobson,
A. The Object Advantage: Business Process
Reengineering with Object Technology.
Addison-Wesley, Wokingham, England,
1994.
2. Malone, T. and Crowston, K. The inter-
disciplinary study of coordination. ACM
Computing Surveys 26, 1 (1994), 87–119.
3. Michelis, G.D., et al. A three-faceted view
of information systems. Commun. ACM
41, 12 (Dec. 1998), 64–70.
4. Munz, R. Usage scenarios of DBMS.
Keynote Address at VLDB’99, Sept.
1999; www.dcs.napier.ac.uk/~vldb99/
IndustrialSpeakerSlides/.
5. Szyperski, C. Component Software. Addi-
son-Wesley, Harlow, England, 1998.
6. Wiederhold, G., Ed. Intelligent Integra-
tion of Information. Kluwer Academic
Publishers, Boston, 1996.

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