6.2 Intra-enterprise scenarios

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In the first phase of implementation, ABC Electronics wants to integrate their retail and wholesale departments. Currently, both organizations have proven IT infrastructures but have no interconnectivity. The first process ABC Electronics wants to focus on is the inventory and order replenishment process. Currently, the items sold are tallied at the end of the month by the retail ordering process and delivered to the wholesale organization by internal mail. This creates a lag in the inventory replenishment process and causes many out of stock situations. A primary business goal is to minimize the loss of sales due to items being out of stock.

Selecting a Business/Integration pattern

In 3.1.1, "Business and IT drivers" on page 35, the following drivers are listed for selecting the Application Integration pattern:

The business processes need to be integrated with existing business systems and information.
The business activity needs to aggregate, organize and present information from various sources within the organization.

Both drivers apply to ABC Electronics. The business processes of the retail department and the wholesale department need to be integrated by integrating the existing retail business system with the existing wholesale business system. The pattern would integrate the retail order information with the wholesale inventory information, eliminating the lag and providing an up-to-date inventory.

The Application Integration pattern can be applied in our intra-enterprise scenarios, as shown in Figure 6-3.

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Figure 6-3: ABC Electronics- Stage I and II architecture overview diagram

6.2.1 Stage I: Internal ordering on demand

In the first stage of the internal implementation, ABC Electronics wants to integrate the retail system and the wholesale system. The primary goal is to integrate the internal retail ordering system with the internal wholesale system to update inventory as replenishment orders are placed. The wholesale group will then be able to monitor inventory levels and deliver replacement parts as needed. There is no business requirement for confirmation when the inventory is updated, but there is a requirement for an audit trail.

For Stage I of our business scenario, we can identify two actors:

The retail system
The wholesale system

We can also identify a use case:

Update inventory

Actors

Table 6-1 provides details on the retail system actor and Table 6-2 provides details on the wholesale system actor.

Table 6-1: Retail system actor details
Actor name	Retail system
Brief description	The retail system implements the retail ordering business process
Status	Primary
Relationships	001 Update Inventory, 002 Get Delivery Date
Associations to use cases

Table 6-2: Wholesale system actor details
Actor name	Wholesale system
Brief description	The wholesale system implements the wholesale inventory management business process
Status	Primary
Relationships
Associations to use cases

Use case 001: Update inventory

Table 6-3 provides details on the update inventory use case.

Table 6-3: Use case 001: Update inventory
Use case name	001 Update Inventory.
Subject area	Wholesale ordering.
Business event	An item sold by the retail division needs to be replaced from the wholesale inventory.
Actors	Retail system, Inventory system.
Use case overview	The retail system places a replenishment order for a sold part with the inventory system.
Preconditions	The retail system supplies a part number for the item to be ordered.
Termination outcome 1	The wholesale inventory system logs the order to the audit trail and schedules delivery of the required part.
Notes

The Stage I use case model is shown in Figure 6-4.

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Figure 6-4: Stage I use case model

Selecting an Application pattern

In Table 3-1 on page 41 and Table 3-2 on page 42, the following drivers are listed for selecting the Message variation of the Process-focused Application Integration::Direct Connection application pattern:

Improve the organizational efficiency
Reduce the latency of business events
Support a structured exchange within the organization
Support real-time one-way message flows
Leverage existing skills
Leverage the legacy investment
Enable back-end application integration
Minimize application complexity

These drivers are a good match for the Stage I scenario. If we were undertaking large-scale integration between numerous applications, the Broker or Serial/Parallel Process application pattern would probably be a better choice. In this example, we are only concerned with point-to-point integration between two applications, so the Direct Connection application pattern is a reasonable choice.

The Message variation of the Process-focused Application Integration::Direct Connection application pattern can be applied in our Stage I scenario. See the following Application Integration scenarios for our sample implementations:

Chapter 8, "Using RPC style Web services" on page 147
Chapter 9, "Using document style Web services" on page 183
Chapter 10, "Using the Web Services Gateway" on page 215
Chapter 13, "Using Java Message Service" on page 279

6.2.2 Stage II: Internal ordering on demand with delivery date

In the second stage of the internal implementation, ABC Electronics wants to further integrate their internal retail and wholesale systems. They now require a real-time notification for out of stock situations with a delivery date when the order can be filled. To improve customer service, the retail department wants to be able to quickly provide their customers with an expected delivery date for items that are not in stock with the retail department.

For Stage II of our business scenario we identify an additional use case:

Get delivery date

Use case 002: Get delivery date

Table 6-3 provides details on the Get delivery date use case.

Table 6-4: Use case 002: Get delivery date
Use case name	002 Get delivery date.
Subject area	Wholesale ordering.
Business event	A delivery date for an item out of stock with the retail division needs to be obtained from the wholesale system.
Actors	Retail system, Inventory system.
Use case overview	The retail system requests a delivery date for an out of stock part from the inventory system.
Preconditions	The retail system supplies a part number for the out of stock item.
Termination outcome 1	The wholesale inventory system logs the request to the audit trail and returns the expected delivery date of the required part to the retail system.
Notes

The Stage II use case model is shown in Figure 6-5.

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Figure 6-5: Stage II use case model

Selecting an Application pattern

In Table 3-1 on page 41 and Table 3-2 on page 42, the following drivers are listed for selecting the Call variation of the Process-focused Application Integration::Direct Connection application pattern:

Improve the organizational efficiency
Reduce the latency of business events
Support a structured exchange within the organization
Support real-time request/reply message flows
Leverage existing skills
Leverage the legacy investment
Enable back-end application integration
Minimize application complexity

All drivers apply to the Stage II scenario. In this scenario, the business process requires that a delivery date be returned in real time, so support for real-time calls between applications is a key driver.

The Call variation of the Process-focused Application Integration::Direct Connection application pattern can be applied in our Stage II scenario. See the following Application Integration scenarios for our sample implementations:

Chapter 8, "Using RPC style Web services" on page 147
Chapter 9, "Using document style Web services" on page 183
Chapter 10, "Using the Web Services Gateway" on page 215
Chapter 11, "Using the Web Services Gateway with J2EE Connectors" on page 237
Chapter 12, "Using J2EE Connectors" on page 263

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