Enterprise Integration – EAI, can be referred as Enterprise application Integration, or System Integration or Middle ware
All in one concept for Enterprise Integration is done in most of the Middleware Framework
Top Open Source ESB
JBOSS ESB (Community)
Apache ServiceMix
MuleSoft
WSO2
Open ESB
Licensed Leaders
WebMethods Integration Server
TIBCO
Microsoft Biztalk
Oracle Middleware
So What is ESB?
Enterprise Service Bus, it’s a common messaging platform where one system communicates with another system. Most of the messaging platform support common messaging formats /protocols like JMS, HTML5 over WEB Socket , HTTP / S, Comet, MQTT etc.,
Messaging Standards
Industry standard messaging standards
Example
Healthcare
HIPPA, HL7
Finance
SWIFT, FIX, FPML, XBRL
Supply chain
EDIFACT, CEFACT
But inside Supply Chain, we have several industry wise messaging formats, like Paper industry has Papinet as one of the standards. To talk about EDI X12 based on the messages its available across all industries, covering finance, supply chain retail, healthcare etc.,
What do Integration Platform do to support messaging standards?
Basically, these formats of messages can be XML based, JSON based, or Flat file based. All these are governed by a key factor called “Schema” for example SAP IDOCs can be exported to a middle ware as XML or Flat file where both are guarded based on the transaction schema.
Middleware framework basically provides a layer of mitigation of this schema and allows the parsing, identification with rapid and guaranteed delivery and processing for the document exchange. They also provide feature that enable mapping of one format messages to another.
How do middle ware support the message transfer of internal or external systems?
In Middle ware we use two famous buzz words called A2A and B2B transactions.
A2A -> Application to Application transfers (Internal systems)
B2B -> Business to Business Transfers (External Systems)
The key feature here is the guaranteed delivery that’s supported in most of the middle wares. Both A2A and B2B messages can be queued and sent in a schedule or instantly based on the way we configure. The configuration layer also is provided more handy for the developer to add a layer of communication protocol like, ftp, sftp, ftps, http/s etc.,
Thank you, more in upcoming articles,