Java Business Integration
I work in web services integration. You well might wonder what that means (WSI, that is, not working!). WSI is a Sun software product group that concentrates on solving enterprise application integration (EAI) and business-to-business electronic data interchange (B2B EDI) problems using standard products that we create, sell, and support.
EAI and EDI problems cover a broad spectrum, ranging from simple point-to-point messaging solutions (to get application A to interoperate with application B), to large collections of applications (and trading partners) being turned into business processes through using sophisticated work flow engines serving to orchestrate everything.
EAI encompasses a huge range of applications, platforms, and technologies. The main challenges we face are:
- Application adaptation. Get applications that were never meant to interoperate with other applications, or perhaps interoperate in standard ways, to interoperate. This includes both packageware and home-grown applications
- Scaling. Getting two applications to interoperate is a tractable problem; getting 50 to interoperate is a far different problem, due to the (N-1)^2 possible connections.
- Decoupling and state management. Combining existing applications to create new business functions often leads to new points where business decisions must be made, and extra state information is created. This can lead to highly coupled applications, where new state and business logic must be added all affected applications. This can lead to a huge maintenance headache. Much of Sun's current integration technology (Forte Fusion, or Integration Service EAI Edition) is built around approaches that separate business process logic from the applications, including state information.
- Managing change. The typical enterprise is a dynamic beast. Applications are added, changed, retired. Mergers bring in a flood on new systems to be integrated or phased out in a controlled fashion. New technologies are deployed that must be integrated into the existing infrastructure. Business processes are changed regularly. All of these changes must not disrupt on-going processes, applications, and the connections between them.
- Reliability. The integration system becomes a key piece of the IT infrastructure, so reliability (not to mention managability) become key concerns.
So how do we control this complexity? Our main approach is embodied in a new Java standard known as
Java Business Integration (JBI), or
JSR 208 to its friends. We are seeking to move toward a standards-based service-oriented approach to integrating applications and EDI. The key abstraction is embodied in WSDL 2.0. Applications are modelled as
WSDL services, using XML-based message exchanges. I'll elaborate on this theme in a subsequent 'blog.
Posted at
05:38PM Jun 07, 2004
by rtenhove in Java Business Integration |