Integrating Islands with Landmasses

Will Mashups become Enterprise Grade?

2008-05-15T02:19:05Z

There is a lot of buzz around mashups but most of it relates to users mixing social applications. Will mashups graduate to becoming enterprise level or will they remain stuck at the user level?

There has been a lot of buzz around Mashups recently with quite a few vendors offering tools for building mashups quickly and easily. IBM announced WebSphere sMash based on Project Zero, WSO2 is providing the WS02 Mashup Server, which has some nifty features for taking simple JavaScript code and building a mashup out of it. But for these tools to enter the enterprise mashups space, there is more expected from them. Any talk of enterprise brings ERP systems such as SAP or Oracle Suite to the fore. And when a mashup building tool looks to provide enterprise mashup building capability, it would probably do well to provide a few adapters to connect to these data sources. This would enable "back-end" applications to be integrated, aggregated and presented as a mashup. Until such time, it would be difficult for enterprise mashups and their builder tools to become common place.

SOI - A part of the whole?

2008-03-18T00:06:00Z

Is SOI a necessary part of SOA?

I am reviewing integration projects being implemented and notice a difference between projects done earlier and now. Interfaces integrating applications (two or more) are now called as integration services, but perform the same task of moving data across. Apparently, everyone wants to get on to the SOA bandwagon in whatever way possible, which behests the question: is an EAI Interface + Service Wrapper = SOI (Service Oriented Integration)? And, can SOI be considered as a necessary part of SOA?

REST in B2B Integration

2007-12-04T02:52:31Z

Is REST an option in B2B integration?

I was reading on REST as it is getting a lot of attention these days. As I came to know more about it, I was wondering if it could be a good alternative to use for B2B integration over the web. Since it is based on HTTP and other well-known standards, it would be easily understood by trading partners and customers. And it may just help people get out of VANs and proprietary EDI software.

Is Canonical XML dying?

2007-10-05T02:04:24Z

Rise of ERP data formats and increasing number of performance related issues have been causing a decline on the use of standards based canonical XML.

Message formats used for transport have evolved from flat files to basic XML and then to canonical XML based on standards. Recently, there has been a movement to use message formats that come with an ERP product, where it is performing core business operations such as Order Management. ERP data formats are being used for conversing with other applications with the justification that since the central system is the ERP product, all changes can be easily controlled since it would be the source of record.

In my opinion, this is not the right approach as it defeats the principle of loose coupling. There is too much dependancy on the ERP system thereby dragging the architecture back to the days of the monoliths. Rather, the correct approach would be for the organization to revive the use of canonical XML by choosing standards relevant to its business domain e.g NRF-ARTS for Retail, papiNet for paper industry etc. The format can then by customized according to its specific needs.

From an industry standpoint, performance for large canonical messages continues to be an issue. Though workarounds such as compression, segmentation etc exist, they remain just that - workarounds. The need is to have some kind of encoding that is more efficient in storing the data while not letting go of the semantics. This would serve to reinforce the use of the canonical format.

How to improve ROI with SOA?

2007-09-18T20:15:38Z

Does SOA make a lot of difference to the ROI for an environment with a good EAI setup already in place?

I was talking to a colleague of mine on using SOA in integration projects, when she cut through the chaff and asked me if we could show a better ROI (Return on Investment) when a project is done using SOA versus doing it "traditionally". Traditional means could be either by custom programming or buying commercial integration components/products, which would essentially be plain EAI. Most of the organizations are aware of EAI products and are engaged in doing integration using them in some form or the other, which leads us to the following questions:

Can doing an integration project with SOA get a significantly better ROI vs. doing it with EAI products?
In either case, do we need to optimize our business processes too to see a better ROI?

Any thoughts are welcome.