EAI Architecture Paterns
EAI Architecture Paterns
EAI Architecture Paterns
Architecture
Patterns
Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) is a rapidly growing seg-
ment in enterprise computing. Multiple forces are driving this
trend. Many of them center on rapidly changing business needs
JEFFREY
C. LUTZ
By
and opportunities driven by the Internet, merger/acquisitions, competition, regulation,
and deregulation. Increased attention on Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and
supply chain integration in many industries is driving the demand for intra- and inter-
enterprise system integration.
Mergers and acquisitions result in the daunting task of inte- the need to deliver more capabilities faster. Increasingly, busi-
grating once separate enterprise computing infrastructures. ness needs necessitate a high degree of application integra-
Many changes in the telecommunications industry, including tion. For example, implementing Web-based bill presentation
deregulation and new service offerings, are having a dramat- requires integrating a Web server with the billing application.
ic effect on the system environments at established and Automating manual processes often requires integrating mul-
emerging telecommunications service providers. tiple applications. Naturally, the IT professional seeks to buy
On the technical front, significant changes are also con- off-the-shelf, where appropriate, to meet business demands
tributing to the rise of EAI. Enterprise Resource Planning and ease the difficult task of application integration.
(ERP) systems have been added as core elements to the enter- In seeking tools to speed EAI development, the IT profes-
prise computing infrastructure. CRM systems are being devel- sional can find many possibilities from dozens of EAI tool
oped and installed to meet business demands. Application and application server vendors. Moreover, there are many cat-
servers are maturing as a tool for developing and deploying dis- egories of middleware and competing products in each cate-
tributed Web- and non-Web-based applications and services. gory. Another complication comes from the failure of many
Legacy application services and data are becoming compo- products to perform as advertised. The deck seems over-
nents, liberated from the confines of legacy, stovepipe applica- whelmingly stacked against the IT professional trying to meet
tions. Distributed computing middleware is continuing its push business expectations and needs.
into the enterprise on several fronts. This includes message-ori-
ented middleware, distributed objects, and remote data access EAI Architecture Patterns to the Rescue
middleware. Also, tools are emerging to address various types Architecture patterns are an important ally of the IT pro-
of EAI, including application integration, data integration, and fessional in the battle against integration complexity and con-
process automation. fusion. EAI architecture patterns provide an architectural
Frequently, confusion and anxiety reign in times of massive view of EAI and a solid technical foundation for successful
business and technical change. Rapid business change drives EAI. The patterns help IT professionals determine the best ap-
Term Definition
Publish and Subscribe A style of inter-application communications. Publishers can broadcast data to a communi-
ty of users or subscribers. An application or user can be both a publisher and subscriber.
Message Broker An intelligent intermediary that directs the flow of messages between applications, which
become sources and consumers of information. Message brokers provide a flexible com-
munications backbone and provide such services as data transformation, message routing
and message warehousing.
Message Queuing A form of communication between programs. Application data is combined with a head-
er (information about the data) to form a message. Messages are stored in queues, which
can be buffered or persistent. It’s an asynchronous communications style and provides a
loosely coupled exchange across multiple operating systems.
Source: www.messagequeue.com/glossary