SOA Web Services - Application Integration Pattern

Application Integration Pattern

The application integration patterns capture the best practices in integrating the back end applications and data. They are observed in the EAI (Enterprise Application Integration) space and are helpful in defining process automation and workflows.

Process integration help companies connecting applications and its users together within and across enterprise boundaries. Such interactions may be serial or parallel. A serial interaction is classified as a series of 1-to-1 interactions between a source and multiple targets in a time-sequenced manner. In the case of parallel interaction, such interactions between the source and multiple targets are concurrent. Using both serial and parallel together, you can classify the interactions in four categories as follows:

• No Serial, No Parallel—Here the messages are transported on a single path to a single target and this is the simplest connection.
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• Serial, No Parallel—A single series of operations is done on multiple targets sequentially.
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• No Serial, Parallel—Messages are switched, split, and joined on multiple paths to multiple targets.
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• Serial, Parallel—Multiple series of operations are done on multiple targets by splitting and joining.

Application Integration Patterns

The patterns for Application Integration are classified further as Process- or Data- focused depending on what they perform. A Process-focused integration patterns defines the functional process flow between the applications and services. A Data- focused integration pattern defines the logical integration of the information or the data used by the applications.

The Process-focused integration patterns are further classified into the following four categories:

• Direct Connection application pattern
• Broker application pattern
• Serial Process application pattern
• Parallel Process application pattern

When applied to the Extended Enterprise domain, these are classified as:

• Exposed Direct Connection application pattern
• Exposed Broker application pattern: Router variation
• Exposed Serial Process application pattern

We will now discuss each of these patterns.