David Linthicum's June 1998 column on emerging middleware solutions was one of the most forward looking and informative that I have read explaining the emerging enterprise application integration (EAI) marketplace. With approximately $24 billion spent annually on achieving interoperability among applications, a lot of money can be saved through better integration practices and tools.Everyone is interested in faster implementation and easier maintenance of enterprise resource planning solutions.
However, cross-application integration today is no off-the-shelf "componentization" plug-and-play product. Achieving interoperability between disparate applications is a specialty that requires a clear understanding of the enterprise's business processes, the systems environment, and each of the proprietary cross applications. Triggered by a timed event, user request, or business process-generated stimulus, a uniquely designed integration solution will automatically acquire data in one or more applications, apply business rule logic, and deliver data to receiving applications in their native structure.
The "magic" of enterprise application integration only happens through a three-way mixture of:
1. A well-designed and maintained integration engine
2. A well-defined application-
specific systems rules and organizational-specific business rules
3. A knowledgeable integration
consultant.
For end users, the bottom line is: Applications change. Business needs change. Integration solutions must be flexible and vendor independent enough to incorporate these future software changes quickly and easily.
John G. Agno
jagno@idesign.com
Thanks for your comments. I could not agree with you more about having a clear understanding of the business, as well as a good consultant, and applications certainly change. The point I was making in the column was the existence of a new generation of middleware products that are now aware of the applications they are linking to. For example, where we now change the application to make use of a middleware layer (for example, RPCs or MOM), the middleware now must adapt to the application. That's the difference, and this new technology saves on the time and cost of EAI. EAI does nothing more than automate processes that we now do manually across stovepipe applications.
Solutions-oriented middleware is simply a better way to solve the EAI problem.
- Dave Linthicum
I just finished reading Derek Ashmore's two articles, "Oracle Backup Techniques" and "Backing up the Oracle Enterprise" (DBMS, May 1998). I think these are the best articles I have read recently. Most impressive and helpful to me were the "Disaster Prevention Recommendations." Those tips will help me correct what we are doing and give me ideas on how to enhance our future backup strategy. I appreciate Derek's efforts to share his experiences.
Peter Cheng
cheng.peter@epcra.org
"Sphinx Awakens" by Robin Schumacher (DBMS, June 1998) was an excellent article. It covered all the most important aspects of SQL Server 7 in great detail but definitely still from the DBA's point of view. I would have liked, though, to see some mention of Microsoft's OLE DB and ADO strategies or how these compare to Microsoft's competitors.
Robin Alden
robin@primegestalt.co.nz