Overview of System Integration

Give examples of business systems (software)!

- CRM systems for managing customers, - Business intelligence systems, - Human resources systems - Payroll systems...and many other

Service-oriented SI solutions adhere to few core principles. Which are those?

- Reusability - use a service in different contexts - Composability - compose smaller services into bigger - Loose-coupling - avoiding a tight coupling among services to support the first two requirements.

What are the three core integration approaches to solve integration of systems?

Information-oriented (data), service-oriented (functionality), process-oriented (behavior).

What is the service-oriented (functionality) approach?

It integrates loosely coupled, reusable software functions. In the service-oriented integration approach, a system invokes the functions of another system.

What is business agility?

It is the ability of a business to act rapidly and deliver efficiently the value to its customers. From the IT perspective, this requires an integrated infrastructure enabling real-time automation of business operations spreading several business systems (software).

What is system integration?

It is the process of linking together different systems/software applications physically and functionally to work as a single system. The resulting solution should lead to automated sharing of data, functions and business processes among any connected system (application) in the enterprise, or in a multi-enterprise business network

What is the process-oriented (behavior) approach?

It models multi-step interactions of data and functions within and out of enterprise boundaries. In the process-oriented integration approach, the communication between systems is structured as an automated process. - It models the integration in the form of existing business processes. - It separates the process from the application logic. - It coordinates/combines the information and/or service flow to realize more complex integrations

What is the information-oriented (data) approach?

It provides an integrated view of data contained in disparate systems. In the information-oriented integration approach, the requirement is to integrate systems to be able to exchange data. Information-oriented solutions are in general solved by replicating or by integrating data, and doing that on the meta-data or the data-level

What is management?

It refers to coordination of the integration -such as when and who?

What is communication?

It refers to the data and functionality being shared among the integrated systems.

Can business systems communicate with one another?

Such systems typically cannot communicate with one another in order to share data or business rules because they are not relying on the same software type -programming languages, data standards, OS, etc.

How is the technological level used?

Technological level is used to realize integration solutions for all three approaches to the above. Example: Web Services, XML, etc.

How are tools used?

Tools are used to run executable versions of our conceptual and technological solutions.

What logical solutions for communication and management exist?

a) Distributed communication and distributed management, i.e. by the involved systems ("point-to-point integration") b) Centralized communication and centralized management, i.e. through and by the "integration broker"/middleware("multipoint integration") c) Distributed communication and centralized management; the involved systems directly communicate, while the management is done by the broker("hybrid integration")