Another place where business processes and assets may require integration is directly at the Resource tier. This is sometimes overlooked, but it is equally important to application-level integration. In some cases it can be straightforwardparticularly if the Resource tiers of the applications are implanted using the same technologies, but in most it is generally a very complex but worthwhile integration. A successful Resource tier integration can lead to more harmonious applications that access these resources and thus ease integration and interoperability challenges at the application layer. Chapter 6 looks at Resource tier synchronous integration, going into detail on the persistence layers that both .NET and Java EE offer as well as providing lots of hands-on experience in dealing with these to implement Resource tier access and integration for the Supply Chain Management scenario. In addition to this, the chapter outlines methodologies for accessing non-database resources such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and other Enterprise Information System (EIS) entities. |