Integration of Information Technologies in Enterprise Application Development
Integration of Information Technologies in Enterprise Application Development
Integration of Information Technologies in Enterprise Application Development
1/2012 21
Healthcare enterprises are disconnected. In the era of integrated information systems and
Internet explosion, the necessity of information systems integration reside from business
process evolution, on the one hand, and from information technology tendencies, on the other
hand. In order to become more efficient and adaptive to change, healthcare organizations are
tremendously preoccupied of business process automation, flexibility and complexity. The
need of information systems integration arise from these goals, explaining, at the same time,
the special interest in EAI. Extensible software integration architectures and business
orientation of process modeling and information systems functionalities, the same as open-
connectivity, accessibility and virtualization lead to most suitable integration solutions: SOA
and BPM architectural styles in a cloud computing environment.
Keywords: EAI (Enterprise Application Integration), BPM (Business Process Management),
SOA (Service Oriented Architecture), ESB (Enterprise Service Bus), WOA (Web Oriented
Architecture)
1 Introduction
The importance and the actual state of
knowledge regarding the integration of
EAI technologies are emerging, not yet
reached a consensus on the ideal approach
informatic technologies in enterprise that businesses should adopt the correct
application development, rise from the formula and complete integration.
current research on information Moreover, the processes of definition of
processes, concepts and technological original and revolutionary EAI solutions are
approaches. The essential mechanisms based on the existing integration solutions,
regarding enterprise software platforms that are ussually optimized and extended in
and integration requirements of order to meet new requirements and
heterogeneous platforms at different approaches in the field of integration
levels (data, functionalities, services, technologies.
processes), depend on business specific The best known commercial EAI solutions
and existing software products. are: IBM WebSphere Message Broker,
Integration processes should be oriented Jonah Technologies, Microsoft BizTalk
on capturing the development stages and Server, Oracle BPEL Process Manager,
aspects of enterprise applications on the Pervasive Software, SAP Exchange
one hand, and information technology Infrastructure, Sterling Commerce, TIBCO
integration processes, on the other. Software, webMethods, Sun Microsystems.
Basic EAI principles and concepts should EAI open source solutions, often preferred
be highlighting issues in defining by software integrators, are: OpenESB,
complete and coherent solutions for Virtuoso Universal Server, Jitterbit
enterprise application integration. Integration Server, JBossESB, Mule.
Table below presents a comparison between
2. Analysis of enterprise software different EAI platforms, given some basic
platforms in relation with business criteria: price, implementation, software
requirements solution maturity and support.
22 Integration of Information Technologies in Enterprise Application Development
Concluding on the table, open source EAI briefly identify some general characteristics
solutions provide the same functionality of services and processes integration,
as commercial solutions, also offered focusing on the advantages and
support developers is supported by disadvantages of integrating information
communities or ad-hoc solutions for open technologies in enterprise application
source to commercial, which is purchased development.
at cost. In terms of planning versions, Advantages:
open-source solutions tend to be updated - natural and proper software solutions;
more often. My choise in term of - development projects must follow the
integration platform for this research is standards, procedures and working
Mule, an open source solution that offers methodologies at all levels;
all the benefits of a mature development - independence between services and
integration platform and a proper work processes, and also business
environment. functionalities;
EAI implementations and modularisation - project development and production
of software applications, regardless of rollout are efficient and easy to handle;
business processes addressed, are based - systems are scalable and availability is
on applying some architectural principles maximum, restricted to user types,
in SOA approaches: applications are business processes and business
transformed in independent service bus, reasons;
ESB architectures are used for - project development life cycle is much
application integration, XML is used for reduced, while adapting to new
data sharing, operational architecture and requirements of business process is
logical database structure are redesigned, faster and easier.
according modularization rules, services Disadvantages:
can be consumed independently, which - hard work on business analysis and
allows more flexibility in deployment and technical analysis in the development of
software configuration capabilities, projects;
compared to solutions for stand-alone - consistent initial efforts to modify and
applications. Different versions of the adapt existing solutions and to
integrated system are simplified by EAI implement the new system;
modularization schemas, as an effect to a - additional and detailed management
weak binary coupling, while versioning activities;
data and interfaces will be compliant to - not all software configuration options
the overrall integrated solution. I will are possible for rollouts;
Database Systems Journal vol. III, no. 1/2012 23
changes that would have occurred at the accuracy of the integrated system;
end of implementation, if there were no events can be synchronous and,
partial validation, along the way, for moreover, asynchronous calls in the
atomic features. automated EAI solutions;
Proposals to improve standard software - business process modeling using
integration methodologies: traditional techniques such as UML will
- increased understanding of the refine them as to achieve the process,
business area to identify key business according to the specific integration
processes and the least important project;
processes; - continous integration process,
- give greater importance to the especially automated testing in order to
implementation of logical flows, validate system quality;
described in terms of functional, - appropriate use of information
operational and integrated business technologies in the integration solutions
flows; development; it is a basic need to select
- understanding of data structures - the best technologies in order to develop
many EAI projects are integrated integrated solutions, otherwise any
only at the data level; it is very mistake is costly in time an
important to correctly identify data appropriate option would be to build a
structures, descriptive data schemas pilot project;
and to accordingly apply business - integrated system performance and
principles to determine which data scalability is a major concern with
streams coexist in an integrated integration projects;
system, where and why to use these - importance of the prototype installation
data in order to make data mappings of intermediate versions of the
and transformation; integrated system, before running the
- understanding of the processes is final installation and launching it into
essential to obtain a correct and production environments;
functional model of the integrated - maintenance effort and support are
system; project definition is considerable in software integration
dependent on how business processes solutions and should be treated
are perceived, but also on the separately.
accuracy of the data model I also made a research on the risks faced by
definition; software integration projects, by
- increased attention to developing highlighting some key issues and
methods and technologies, rather implementing a risk analysis example for e-
than work processes; Health prototype. I highlighted the major
- identification of user interfaces has risk factors and proposed a risk management
great importance for understanding plan, as a measure to reduce the negative
the integration points between impact on implementation processes of an
disparate applications; integrated system.
- understanding of events is a key
factor for the functional model
26 Integration of Information Technologies in Enterprise Application Development
For each of these risks I have probably, implementing software development over
given the appropriate points of established protocols and standards. Case
occurrence and expected impact, causing study performed and presented in this paper
a degree of exposure of project risks. starts from the goal of systems integration
Prioritizing, then, risks after exposure, we process, the complexity of its component
see that the most dangerous risk for the phases, meaning the creation of an
integration project is the lack and integrated information system, having at
incompletion of requirements analysis. least the following attributes:
For each risk noted in the figure above, I comprehensive, coherent, independent of
have shortly proposed actions to take in geographical, social, national or business
order to minimize negative impact and processes logic limitations.
effects, actions that should be the most I will describe in this section a platform for
appropriate strategy to consider. software systems integration, developed in
Extending risk analysis, we can discuss Mule, which aims to highlight aspects of the
here also about positive risks, events that application integration, such as: integration
can bring benefits and new capabilities to at data sources level, service based
project success. integration, business processes integration,
In other words, the proposed through implementation of components
methodology was applied naturally in the focused on the integration of data, services
e-Health prototype, proved to be both a and processes. I choose Mule platform for
way of control and predictability, offering software prototype development because it
in the same time operational support for is an efficient, complex and frequently used
carrying out a complex integration development environment for integration of
project. information technologies. To illustrate the
theoretical and practical concepts presented
5. Implementation of a cross-platform in previous sections, according to the
software system implementation which is further described in
The proposed solution for enterprise detail, I present the prototype of an
applications integration is located at the integrated system for e-Health. From
middleware level and aims to integrate functional point of view, the experiment
functionalities and heterogeneous data represents an interoperability model between
sources, by interoperation of a medical system and financial system. In
heterogeneous information technology, terms of working context, the integration
data sources of different origins and prototype combines development
different business functionalities. Also, in technologies / platforms like Java, .NET,
the practical experiment I will emphasize Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, Mule,
the use of uniform policies for Apache, web-service based architecture
communication between applications, by (SOA, WOA), service and process based,
Database Systems Journal vol. III, no. 1/2012 27
ODRA, ORM. The project aims to the two heterogeneous systems, the next
achieve an integrated sistem and level of complexity is demonstrating a non-
consistency at the level of data, services trivial mechanism of communication
and processes, by combining and through messages. I will present
integrating heterogeneous information architectural and functional model
technologies. underlying messaging communication
Besides service level integration between software systems located on both
prototype and specific calls that sides of the enterprise web service bus.
orchestrate the communication between
Medical system manages entities like transformed into XML data, SOAP and
patients and consultations and receives retransmitted as serializable objects to
from the financial system billable items, client applications, to be deserialized for
deliverable items/services, notification internal usage purposes.
about patient billing / payment. At the Software architecture used for exposing
other endpoint of the enterprise service functionalities of business processes as
bus there are integration services and web services is based on a SOA
business processes of the financial virtualization engine, which allows the
system, which manages items and bills definition of services that can be accessed
and communicate both with the medical via FTP, XFB, EJB, JMS, SOAP / HTTP.
system for receiving patients as the The access to web services is done
equivalent of customers and for through UDDI or graphical interfaces
intercepting transaction execution as the provided by the development
deliverance of medical services in the environment tools, the main purpose of
consultations. SOA being service re-usability. UDDI
Using this functional model, I have registry allow the attachment of metadata
designed an integrated system objects that virtualize access to services,
implemented in Mule, using some design such as status or version identifiers for
principles to work in the following each called service instance.
integration schema: declarative The conclusion of the project of
addressing and XML configuration for integrating information technologies Java
service invoker, SOAP formatting and .NET using the Mule platform, is that
messages sent inside the service bus and I have proposed an efficient and
web proxy service calls to end-point. I interesting way of building a reliable,
used the .NET environment developer scalable and extensible prototype for
tools and Visual Studio 2010 to generate enterprise application integration. The
references to proxy for Web Services. project can be easily extrapolated and
After generating web service brokers, adapted to complex business processes,
client applications generate in the form of in order to achieve a fully integrated IT
.NET proxy, on the one hand, and within solution. Developing this prototype I
ESB, Apache proxy, on the other hand, reached to demonstrate an original
the distributed communication formula for a solution of integrating
architecture is the following: a client information technologies for enterprise
application, i.e. the medical system, calls application development.
a local method to process entity
"delivered service into consultation"; 6. Business process modelling and
local method calls a web service exposed optimization based on integrated
by Mule integration server, it makes software systems and workflow
medical entity to be passed internally analysis
within the service bus, which will be The need for enterprise application
given to a web service component type to integration result from the need for
the other endpoint of the integration networking and communication between
server. This service will call an internal different types of applications. Relative to
method of the other client application, i.e. disconnected systems in terms of costs
the financial system, that will process versus benefits, there are two solutions to
information from another business meet the need to integrate existing
perspective: invoicing patient medical software products: rewriting them for
services. Between the exchanges of intercommunication or software
messages in the web service bus, working integration for their existing IT solutions
entities are subject to transformations and - that means integration through coupling
serialized/de-serialized. Generic objects / decoupling mechanisms governed by
are serialized in SOAP messages, then EAI principles.
30 Integration of Information Technologies in Enterprise Application Development
Various aspects of business processes - offers real time data acces and
modelling and optimization in terms of operation;
information systems, start from the use of - removes multiple data operations and
existing information systems, the need of greater allocation in order
restructured/refactored systems or to check data consistency;
integrated systems. - eliminates gaps in information
Based on the comparative approach in system, information redundancy and
terms of cost and efficiency, depending long time development of various
on circumstances and context of business internal processes (billing,
(designed business area, dynamism of the contracting, commissioning, monthly
business domain, scale and complexity of reporting);
software product, architectural design of - reduces cumbersome tracking
the underlying software systems, the business costs distributed on cost
degree of use and efficiency) will be center and budget lines, allocated to
chosen one of these options: to rewrite business size.
existing software products, according to
new requirements, or to define a solution Conclusions
for enterprise application integration, Research done in integrating enterprise
starting fro legacy applications. applications, as described in this paper,
Whatever the choice made, system captures more fundamental aspects,
development related activities require theoretical and practical, existing and
additional resources and maintenance new concepts of EAI. Based on existing
efforts. As the level of abstraction of a theories, but also practical and
system is higher, the more simple the methodological aspects of the existing
process of reengineering becomes and implementations of EAI, I defined a
there will be available more information solution for enterprise application
about program and data structure, models integration on multiple descriptive levels:
of business entities, design models for software product development
data and control flow, UML class methodology, technical implementation
diagrams, states, actions, workflows. and functional analysis. I also stressed the
The basic conclusion is that systems context of these approaches, methods of
require additional efforts and extensible, optimization of business processes
automated architectures, in order to through an integrated approach, options
maintain and simplify the structure and to for achieving a fully integrated
deal with the dynamism of business information system respecting the
environment. Any chosen solution must principle of maximizing efficiency.
be optimal no matter the considerents Based on personal experience, but also on
taken into account. In particular, standard theories in software integration
integrated software solutions are subject area, I outlined the advantages and
to software reengineering, in order to disadvantages of various solutions and I
optimize business processes and to better have highlighted generally accepted
exploit the new system. principles in case of dynamic software
I will define, based on personal systems over a certain level of
experience and information systems complexity. Software prototype for
efficiency theories, an own assessment of enterprise applications integration for e-
the effectiveness system for an enterprise Health was designed and developed with
application integration, in the medical the latest information technologies and it
field. The main advantages of integrated is a functional system that demonstrates
information system usage are: the practical and experimental utility, of
- removes difficulties and low speed in an integrated information system, built
the operation of data, restricting with a personal vision.
users to be proficient;
Database Systems Journal vol. III, no. 1/2012 31