M3 “Information-Oriented”
• 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
• 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
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
• 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
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
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
• 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
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
- Interface between application and database need to
be changed
Interface Processing
• Integrating packaged and custom applications
- Example: Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
• Adapters to connect custom and packaged applications
• Most popular integration approaches
• 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
• Disadvantage
- Little regards to business logic
