Enterprise Application Integration and Approaches Used
We ask Itransition Software Company about Enterprise Application Integration.
So Enterprise Application Integration can be referred to as a process of integrating various applications relating to the enterprise all together by using computer software resources. These applications can be of two types like front office applications and back office applications which communicate to each other through data passing and collaborative approach of different applications. EAI is not restricted to sharing data between applications only but its functioning proceeds further to sharing business data and processes in between. Enterprise application integration system works on the principle of interdependence, which might lead to greater problems in future in the networks comprising of heterogeneous distributed systems.
Business processes are directly linked with the back office or transparent applications. The examples of such back office applications are like Decision Support System and Enterprise Resource Planning which are the systems to be dealt by employees and managers only. On the other hand front office applications like Customer Relationship Management have different communication architectures involved. In case of CRM the communication architecture used is Enterprise Service Bus or ESB. ESB connects numerous and independent systems with each other. While developing or operating enterprise applications one has to integrate all the different applications all together, and that is what known as Enterprise Application Integration.
Enterprise App Integration works with middleware technologies along with some message oriented architectures like MOA and XML like data representation tech etc. To make the system highly transparent and scalable such XML technologies are used. Web services serves as the only medium to provide scalability to such integration systems since everything is put on the surface to let the users understand and direct it from one point to another. One approach to provide scalability to enterprise application integration with web services is message oriented architecture; another could be service oriented architecture, which is a collection of services. Both the architectures use application services to communicate with each other.
Service oriented architecture responds more quickly to the changing market conditions in a very cost effective way. Factors to be considered while implementing SOA are like security, applications and incorporating WS-security suite of specifications to provide security to the application in whole. The basic difference between the two approaches for enterprise application integration is that, web services system simplifies the mechanism to connect the applications irrespective of the technology or devices used or even irrespective of the locations too. But in case of service oriented architecture, it enables the business to speed up their delivery of IT projects easily in an easy and cost effective manner. SOA is said to be an ideal framework to leverage functionality in all kinds of systems to allow it to respond much faster and accurately.