So, What s the Big Deal?

So, What's the Big Deal?

The strengths of XML make it extremely valuable in all types of application integration projects. Still, its real value resides in the world of application integration as the infrastructure for information exchange and management.

XML provides a robust, human-readable information-exchange standard that is not just a consensus choice, but a unanimous one. It can support the exchange of application semantics and information content, providing an application-level mechanism for producing business information that other applications can use without needing to understand anything about the transmitting applications (see Figure 11.1).

Figure 11.1. XML provides a common mechanism for data interchange that everyone can agree upon.

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XML gets most of its "traction" from this common mechanism for information exchange. More specifically, it gets its traction primarily around two application integration problem domains: intra- and intercompany.

Fundamentally, intracompany application integration is about binding applications and data stores together to solve business problems. Its strength is facilitating the free flow of information from any system to any other system, with each of those systems gaining access to perfect external information in real time. Intracompany typically integrates ERP packages such as SAP, PeopleSoft, and Baan, in addition to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) packages, databases, and older mainframe systems. Intracompany application integration also allows organizations to externalize existing enterprise application information to interested parties through the Web, as evidenced in a portal-based solution.

Knowing, as we now do, that the essence of application integration is the binding of applications and data stores together in order to share information with external and internal information systems, we can see that intra- and intercompany application integration are intrinsically related. Application integration constructs the infrastructure that supports the free flow of information between companies. As such, it is functionally an extension of the intracompany infrastructure that includes enterprise applications existing in other organizations.

The design patterns of applications and data stores in the application integration problem domain are similar to those in intracompany application integration problem domains. All that changes is the mechanisms employed to exchange the information, which in an application integration environment are generally less intrusive and more data oriented than in the intracompany application integration environment.



Next Generation Application Integration(c) From Simple Information to Web Services
Next Generation Application Integration: From Simple Information to Web Services
ISBN: 0201844567
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 220

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