Integration Servers and AI

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Integration Servers and AI

• Integration servers provide pre-built adapters,
  rather than custom programming, to perform
  integration
• The other key components provided by of
  integration servers are a consistent framework
  (software) for business process automation and
  building connectors to systems, transformation
  and translation services, communication/transport
  services, transaction coordination services, and
  GUI-based software for modeling and designing
  process flows http//www.varbusiness.com/article/s
  howArticle.jhtml?articleId18819387
• Integration servers may be viewed as
  multi-protocol switches for many intra and
  inter-enterprise applications

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• Integration servers can be set up easily to
  broker information between a variety of
  source-target entities, taking into account
  differences in application semantics, database
  schemas, and process information
• The services included in integration servers are
  transformation, intelligent routing, rules
  processing, message warehousing, flow control,
  repository services, directory services,
  management, and APIs and adapters.

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• Integration servers provide a layer on top of
  existing middleware a sort of middleware of
  middleware thus enabling more comprehensive and
  effective solutions
• The three primary components of integration
  servers are transformation layer, rules engine
  and the intelligent routing mechanism
• The asynchronous store-and-forward messaging
  allows for producer-consumer (publish/subscribe)
  message flows

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Message Brokering

• Source-target systems may remain anonymous.
  Brokering also accomplishes data translation and
  conversion, reformatting, reconstituting, and
  routing to any number of targets based on
  business rules

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API and Adapters

• Applications may continue to invoke existing APIs
  for integration. The integration server adapter
  renders it into a form that the server
  understands. The adapters also publish
  information to the target application in a form
  that the target application can understand

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Transformation Layer

• Transformation layer performs source-target
  message translations on the fly. It provides a
  common dictionary containing information on how
  each application communicates outside itself, as
  well as which bits of information have meaning to
  which applications.
• Transformation has parsing and pattern-matching
  methods for describing structure of message
  formats

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Schema Conversion

• Schema conversion takes into account the
  differences between application semantics, and
  performs the translations dynamically

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Data Conversion

• Rules-based (algorithms or look-up tables)
  conversions of data formats, e.g. numeric to
  character, and vice versa. Conversions need to
  take into account many different formats such as
  character, binary integers, floating-point
  numbers, bit fields, IBM mainframe floating
  points, COBOL and PL/I picture data, BLOBs, etc.

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Intelligent Routing

• Content-based routing or flow control making use
  of rules and message information, identifying the
  message source, and routing it to appropriate
  targets

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Rules Processing and Message Warehousing

• The rules processing engine allows architects and
  developers to create rules that control the
  processing and distribution of information,
  taking into account the differences in formats,
  and message destinations based on contents
• Rules may be described using scripting languages
  and applied interpretively
• Message Warehousing is a database allowing for
  message persistency for subsequent analysis,
  summaries. extraction, integrity, archiving, and
  auditing in terms of conformity to business rules

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Repository Services

• Repository is a database of information about
  source and target applications, with information
  such as the following
• Owner of System (company)
• Location of the system (directory)
• Security parameters
• Message schema information
• Metadata
• Enabling technology
• Transformation information
• Rules and logic for message processing
• Design and architecture information, e.g. UML
• Object information

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User Interface

• Integration servers are GUI based, often
  point-and-click type environments, simplifying
  the application integration process
• Integration servers also provide administrative
  features such as monitoring the message traffic,
  performance of integration servers, status of
  connected systems, etc.

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Integration Server Topologies

• Conventionally, the servers have used
  hub-and-spoke topology, with server at the hub
  and applications forming the star, with one hub
  or more hubs for flexibility in terms of hub
  types and scalability in terms of total number of
  application systems, and fail safe service