Perfect Integration – the eBook
Perfect Integration by Martijn Linssen What started with Perfect Integration 1 – Architectural Approach and ended with Perfect Integration 13 – the do’s has become a lot of words, more than 10,000 actually. Hence my decision to publish it as an eBook for easier reading – if you have any comments or questions you […]
Perfect Integration 13 – the do’s
Final post in the series, this is the summary and conclusion, to be used as some sort of checklist if you like. When conducting enterprise business application integration, within the enterprise IT landscape among applications and systems, or from there to others at another company or even directed towards the customer, here are the pragmatic […]
Perfect Integration 12 – the dont’s
I changed my mind and decided to end this series with positive do’s, so this is the dont’s one. Then again reserving no. 13 for the dont’s was a superstitious move anyway, and as I’m neither religious nor superstitious (they usually travel in pairs), it’s better this way. This post is about debunking TLA’s and […]
Perfect Integration 11 – Orchestration
I’ve compared the diversity of an IT application landscape and managing its information exchange in a uniform way to translation, with the European Parliament as a perfect example of translating dozens of languages via three intermediate languages. In IT, we only need one, as languages (syntaxes) there are far less complex than in the linguistic […]
Perfect Integration 10 – the missing link: envelope
With a common language, a common transport protocol, and the need to exercise the necessary translation and transformation on both levels in between, there is a growing need to be able to identify all “service requests” on a generic level too. Numerous and various requests will be made, in different formats, via different transport protocols. […]
Perfect Integration 9 – history with hindsight
In the previous post, the history of Integration passed: point-to-point, EAI and ESB. For those who read and grasped post 1 through 7, it’ll be clear why I favour which one – but let me explain it in more detail. What are the differences between the different historical approaches? The crucial difference is that EAI […]
Perfect Integration 8 – history of the last decades
In the first seven posts, the approaches to Integration have been shown. The architectural top-down approach, the common subset theme, and the central integration methods: messaging, transformation and transportation. Now the approach to successful integration has been set out, a brief story about integration in the real IT world, over the last decades, is in […]
Perfect Integration 7 – information exchange: transportation
After creating and or choosing a common or generic format to exchange the information, there is one other field to explore: the facilitation of various communication protocols through which this information can be transported. What applies to messages, also applies to transport: a common language is to be advised as “main artery” for all the […]
Perfect Integration 6 – Common language: syntaxes
In the previous posts I explained semantics, syntax, and the fastest, cheapest and easiest way to get from diverse IT applications to one uniform business language. This post will take a deep dive into message formats such as Flat file, EDIFACT, XML and JSON. Ever wondered about the pros and cons of XML? JSON? What […]
Perfect Integration 5 – Common language: indirect translation
Number 5 in the series, this post is about indirect translation, in contrast with the direct translation shown in the previous post, which came with costly, exponential dependencies. When looking towards large-scale use of translators, e.g. the European Committee in Brussels, it is easily observed how these dependencies can be greatly reduced: all languages are […]
Perfect Integration 4 – Common language: direct translation
This post in the series is about my favourite subject: translation. Long, long, long ago I aspired to become an interpreter – but changed my mind. Still, I consider myself a linguist and a good one at that, speaking 6 languages of which 3 fluent. The existence of extreme diversity in languages of the world, […]
Perfect Integration 3 – Common language: semantics first
This post will elaborate on messaging and transformation (part I), and explain how information exchange works in the daily world, considering simple or complex information exchanges. That will then be related to IT, and the basic ways of “writing down” information in IT will be explained. If you want to have a chat with someone […]
Perfect Integration 2 – Common subset and transformation
Number two in the series, this post deals with the common subset found on all levels in the previous post: what is the shared interest (Business) which information do you want to share (Information) which definitions are mutually exchangeable (Information Systems) how do you want to exchange ideas (Infrastructure) Information exchange form: messaging After having […]
Perfect Integration 1 – Architectural Approach
First post in a series of 5-10, I will release all my views and opinions on the Art of Integration. I challenge you to disagree, and bash me with arguments and reasoning. Feel free to shoot from the hip and aim at the heart, anything goes really. I am absolutely convinced that I am right […]
