Enterprise Application Integration

Article

Figure 1: Enterprise Application Integration

Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) is the use of software and a computer system's architectural principles to integrate a set of enterprise computer applications. This is defined as an enterprise application combined with another application to provide double benefit and implementations. Simply speaking, it's an interoperability among widely introduced enterprise infrastructures. Before people were using point-to point integration and that is not good enough.

Point-to-point Integration

Figure 2: Point-to-point Integration

Transfers here are between two systems only that represents point to point and those files that are created intentionally are most unusual since they are not used by more than one receiving system. This is mainly used during the infrastructure that has a minimum number of components. These were a major drawback and shortfall for this integration since the components of the infrastructure only tends to be increased and not to decrease. People who were using this type of integration thought that this was unmanageable, a very damaging budget and also did not meet the client expectations. So people moved to other types of integration where these all are handled.

Enterprise Application Integration (EAI)

To overcome the drawbacks, complearial; sans-serifxity of the point to point integration where there are two points in the integration of the enterprise application integration that uses centralized complexity and connections to manage all the systems accurately. The point-to-point use separates the connector to connect with every other connector. Here EAI uses standard methods to connect to a common system that are all responsible for reliability, functionality and integration with the entire network.

This is a more flexible architecture where there is no tightly coupled system like p2p integration. This is an entirely loosely-coupled system. This is mainly used as a central hub called a broker where all the functionalities required are centrally integrated.

Broker Model

Figure 3: Broker Model

A centrally integrated engine is called a broker in EAI where this deals with transformation of messages, data and operations from one system to the other lying at the center of the system like a hub. Whatever operations it undergoes will be managed and maintained by the broker. Let us explain the advantages and disadvantages of the broker model.

Advantages

Loosely-coupled system
Less repetitive actions
There is no waiting time for the recipient to reply
The messages sent will be reached without any disturbance

Dis-Advantages

If the broker fails then the entire systems fails
Efficiency may be reduced when all the data and operations pass via broker.
Heavy weight

Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

Figure 4: Enterprise Service Bus

This is called the next step or advancement of EAI. The broker model was used by various companies but there were vast failures due to heavy weight, costs, maintenance and failures of the broker engine. So people found an advancement rectifying the drawbacks, it is called the bus architecture, the next step of EAI.

Bus Architecture

The bus is also a central engine component where data and messages passes through them but other various integrations are being divided and given to others in the network. The final result will be shared with the bus at the reporting time segment. The result components are grouped into various configurations to handle integration scenarios in the most efficient way as possible. This will help in scaling a large geographical area infrastructure that EAI or p2p could not manage with.

ESB

With the bus architecture the security features, transaction options and error handling were all able to be standardized. These components were centralized in the EAI whereas the bus architecture divides and shares every component independently. Thus this provides a very good result in light weight, scalability, operability, maintenance and so on. This bus architecture that overcomes most of the drawbacks of EAI are called ESB.

ESB Features