Information Routing

In addition to transformation, information routing is another core feature that provides a mechanism to move information from system to system. We have a few scenarios that apply, including:

• One to one

• Many to many

• Many to one

It's important that your integration technology can route information from many systems to many systems, as well as split information coming from one system to be sent to multiple targets, and combine information coming from many systems for a single target. While this sounds simple, the application of the mechanism is far from simple. We must introduce the notion of behavior to operate on this information.

Intelligent Routing

Intelligent routing, sometimes referred to as flow control or content-based routing, builds on the capabilities of both the rules layer and the semantic transformation layer. An integration server can "intelligently route" a message by first identifying it as coming from the source application and then routing it to the proper target application, translating it if required.

For example, when a message arrives at the integration server, it is analyzed and identified as coming from a particular system and/or subsystem. Once the message is identified and the message schema is understood, the applicable rules and services are applied to the processing of the message, including transformation. Once the information is processed, the integration server, based on how it is programmed, routes the message to the correct target system. This all takes place virtually instantaneously, with as many as a thousand of these operations occurring at the same time.

Filters

In addition to intelligent routing, it's important to provide the notion of filtering, as well. In the world of application integration, filters are software subsystems that are able to analyze content and selectively leave out specific information based on content or, perhaps, source or target information.

Filters are important to application integration due to the complexity of information coming from source systems and the need to simplify that information before it's processed in the integration server or sent to the target system. The notion of filtering is well defined, and the act of filtering is a mandatory feature.