Systems Integration Approaches

ITEC75A - SYSTEM INTEGRATION AND ARCHITECTURE 1

First Semester, A.Y. 2020– 2021
Jay-Arr C. Buhain
Systems Integration
● Binds information systems
● at information and service levels
● Supports information exchange
● Provides ability to do business in real-time
● Technical as well as strategic value
● Need integration solutions to support
● Electronic markets, supply chain enablement, web visibility, customer
relationship management (CRM)
● Success and value of application integration depends on
● how well you understand the problem domain
● the architecture you employ
● technology you leverage
Systems Integration Approaches

● Software applications can be integrated using different

approaches
● Information-oriented
● Business process integration-oriented
● Service-oriented
● Portal-oriented
Information-Oriented

● Integration of two or more systems by allowing simple

exchanges of data between applications
● Connecting databases
● Deals with simple exchanges of data between two or more
applications
● Migrates data from source database to target database
● Disadvantage
● Designers need to know all integrated systems in detail
Information-Oriented
Information-Oriented: Example

● Moving information between systems may require

changing both the content and schema on the fly
Information-Oriented: Integration Concepts

● Coupling
● Bind applications together in such a way that they are dependent on
each other, sharing the same methods, interfaces, and perhaps data
● Needs extensive changes in applications
● If source or target system changes, corresponding changes required
in coupled systems as well
● Reusability
● Allows common business processes to be reused
Information-Oriented: Integration Concepts

● Cohesion
● “Act or state of sticking together” or “the logical agreement”
● Applications and databases are independent of each other
● Changes to source or target system should not affect others directly
● Provides flexibility to integration
● Allows addition, changes, and removal of systems without affecting integrated
system
Information Producers and Consumers

● Source and target systems are the entities that

produce and consume information
● Types of systems that produce and consume
information are
● Database (integration using SQL, JDBC)
● Application (API, adapters)
● User interface (screen scraping)
● Embedded devices (temperature sensors, call-counting machines)
● These systems are point of integration
● since they are designed to produce and consume information
Approaching Information Integration
● Steps to approach information integration
● Identify the data
● Catalog the data
● Build the enterprise metadata model
● This model will be used as master guide for integrating the
various information stores that exists within the enterprise
● A successful integration solution requires the enterprise to
define both how the information flows through it and how it
does business
● Different ways to connect
● Data Replication
● Data Federation
● Interface Processing
Information-Oriented: Data Replication

● Moving data between two or more databases

● Accomplished by placing a software between
databases
● Extracts data from source database
● Places data in the target database
● Advantage
● Low cost and easy to integrate
Information-Oriented: Data Replication

● Disadvantage
● Not suitable for integrating functions in applications
● If methods are bound to data or shared along with data
● Requires changes in source and target applications
Information-Oriented: Data Federation
● Integrating multiple databases
into a single virtual database
● Application access virtual
databases
● Integration software handles the
collection and distribution of the data to
the physical database
● Advantage
● Can integrate different types of
databases
● Disadvantage
● Interfacebetween application and
database need to be changed
Information-Oriented: Interface Processing

● Integrating packaged and custom applications

● Example: Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
● Adapters to connect custom and packaged applications
● Most popular integration approach
● Advantage
● Efficient integration for commercially available software products
● API solutions take into account for differences between
schema, content, and application semantics when
translating information to move between systems
● Includes screen scrappers as points of integration
Information-Oriented: Interface Processing

● Disadvantage
● Little regards to business logic
Business Process Integration-Oriented

● The goal of business process integration is to allow

integration not only by sharing information but also by
managing the sharing of that information with easy to
use tools
● Focuses on coordinating or managing information flow between
source and target applications
● Focuses on process logic while separating application logic
● Defined as applying appropriate rules, in an agreed
upon logical sequence, in order to pass information
between participating systems, as well as visualize
and share application-level processes
Business Process Integration-Oriented

● It is the ability to define a common business process

model that addresses the sequence, hierarchy, events,
execution logic and information movement between
systems
● Central management of processes that exist on top of an existing set
of processes and applications
● Mechanism to manage movement of data and invocation of
processes in order
● Support for management and execution of processes that exists
between applications
Business Process Integration-Oriented

● It is the ability to define a common business process

model that addresses the sequence, hierarchy, events,
execution logic and information movement between
systems
● Central management of processes that exist on top of an existing set
of processes and applications
● Mechanism to manage movement of data and invocation of
processes in order
● Support for management and execution of processes that exists
between applications
Business Process Integration-Oriented

● Binds disparate processes and

create process-to-process
solutions
● Automates tasks performed by humans
● Advantage
● Supports information and control logic
flow
● Automates tasks performed by humans
● Disadvantage
● Focuses on process flow and integration
of processes only
● Not on user interface, updating
databases or executing a transaction
Business Process Integration-Oriented Application Integration

● It is the ability to define a common business process

model that addresses the sequence, hierarchy, events,
execution logic and information movement between
systems
● Idea is to provide single logical model that spans many
applications and data stores
● Providing the notion of a common business process that controls how
systems and humans interact to fulfill a unique business requirement.
Business Process Integration-Oriented Application Integration

● Future of application integration

● Advantage
● Supports information and control logic flow
● Automates tasks performed by humans
● Disadvantage
● Focuses on process flow and integration of processes only
● Not on user interface, updating databases or executing a transaction
Objective

● Provides control mechanism of sorts that defines and

executes the movement of information and the
invocation of processes that span many systems
Technology Components
● Graphic modeling tool
● Where business model is created and defined
● Business process engine
● Controls the execution of the multi step
business process and maintains state and the
interactions with the middleware
● Business process monitoring interface
● Allows end users to monitor and control
execution of a business process in real time
and optimize where needed
● Business process engine interface
● Allows other applications to access the
business process engine
● Integration technology (middleware)
● Connects the source and target systems
Technology Levels

● Three levels of technology

● Process modeling
● Information movement is defined here
● Components of models are
● The common process model
● Real entities, such as companies, organizations, or people
● The source and target systems
● Transformation, routing and rules
● Information movement and formatting occurs here
● Routing allows relevant information to be extracted from any source application,
target application, or data store
● Messaging service
● Responsible for moving information between all connected applications
Service-Oriented Application Integration

● Provides mechanism to bind applications together at

service level
● The goal is to leverage power of Internet to provide
access to remote application services through well-
defined interface and directory services
● Web services is the technology to realize above goal
● Web services is the future of application integration
Service-oriented
● Integrates applications by allow
them to share business logic and
methods
● Example: Web services
● Advantage
● Allows reusability of applications
● Disadvantage
● Need to change application logic
● High cost for implementation
The Basics

● Service-oriented application integration provides

infrastructure for enterprises to share common
application services as well as information
● Infrastructure: Web services (distributed objects)
●A common set of applications services among
enterprise applications invites reusability and as a
result, significantly reduces the need for redundant
application services and/or applications
Application Service
● Application services
● Subroutines or methods in applications
● Something you invoke to make
something happen
● Remote services that produces
or consumes information
● Application services are
composed together to provide
composite applications made
up of local and remote
application services
● Allows remote services to be invoked
as if it is local service
When to Leverage Service-Oriented Integration

● When two or more companies need to share common

program logic
● Such as calculation of shipping costs from a common supplier, which
constantly changes
● When two or more companies want to share the
development costs and the value of a common application
● When the problem domain is small and specialized, and is
able to collaborate on a common application that all
companies share
● Potential benefit of service-oriented integration is the
simple binding of two or more applications in order to
integrate both business processes and data
Solutions Architecture
● Event-driven
● Refers to those architectures that deal more with information movement that
application service aggregation
● Data moves from system to system in support of a particular business
transaction, but there is also a requirement to access application services
● Composite-applications
● Refers to those architectures that require application services to aggregate
into a single instance of an application
● Autonomous-distributed
● Refers to those architectures where web services are so tightly coupled that
they appear as a single application
● Binding applications together, inter and intra company, into a single, unified
whole
Portal-Oriented Application Integration
● Allows to view a multitude of systems (both internal and
external enterprise systems) through a single user
interface or application
● Most often using web browser
● Avoids back-end integration altogether
● Steps to create portal
● Design portal application including user interface and application behavior
● Portal application must be able to control user interaction, capturing and processing
errors and controlling the transaction from the user interface all the way to the
back-end systems
● Application servers provide the interface development environment (IDE) for
designing the user interface, define application behavior and back-end connector.
● Determine which information contained within the back-
end systems needs to be shared with portal application
Portal-Oriented
● Integrates applications
through single user
interface or application
● Mostly, through web browser
● Externalizes information from
multiple applications to a single
application
● Advantage
● No back-end integration
● Ease of use (browser user
interface)
● Disadvantage
● Not real-time integration
Portal Power
● Primary advantage of using portals is there is no need to integrate
back-end systems directly between companies or within enterprises
● Eliminates associated cost and risks
● Noninvasive approach allowing other organizations to interact with a
company’s internal systems through a controlled interface accessible
over the web
● Faster implementation than other integration approaches
● Disadvantages
● Information does not flow in real time, so requires human interaction
● Does not automatically react to business events
● Information must be abstracted through another application logic layer (e.g..: application
servers)
● This adds complexity
● Security is a significant concern when enterprise data is being
extended to users over the web
Portal Categories
● Single-System Portals
● Single enterprises that have their user interfaces extended to the web
● Approaches: application servers, page servers, and technology for translating
simple screens to HTML
● Multiple-Enterprise-System Portals
● Extending single-system portal architecture to multiple enterprise systems
● Application server architecture
● Users are able to extract information from these systems and update them through
a single web browser interface accessed over an extranet or over the web
● Enterprise Portals
● Extending multiple-enterprise system portal to include systems that exist
within many companies
● Application servers are a good choice for enterprise, funneling information
from the connected back-end enterprise systems
Components of Portal Architecture
● Web clients
● PC or any device that runs a web browser and is capable of
displaying HTML and graphics
● Web servers
● Web servers, at their core, are file servers.
● They respond to requests from web clients, then send the requested
file
● Double duty
● • Serve file content to web clients
● • Perform rudimentary application processing
● Database servers
● Respond to requests and return information
Components of Portal Architecture

● Back-end applications
● Enterprise applications existing either within a single enterprise or
across many enterprises
● Example: ERP systems
● Application servers
● Provide middle layer between back-end applications, databases, and
the web server
● Communicates with both the web server and the resource server
using transaction-oriented application development
Next Generation
● Digital economy
● Business runs within and between computers
● Everything automated
● Customers expect instantaneous access to information
● Application Integration
● Competitive advantage
● Ability to do business faster
● Satisfy customer on demand
● Next generation integration
● Integrate all disparate systems with a minimum impact on the applications
and way of doing business
● Adjustable to business needs
● Quick deployment
● Handle most business events electronically and in real time