Home > Articles > Web Development

This chapter is from the book

Business Integration: Roles, Products, and Technical Challenges

Successful business integration projects require a few basic ingredients:

  • A clear separation of roles in the development organization to promote specialization, which typically improves the quality of the individual components that are developed
  • A common business object (BO) model that enables business information to be represented in a canonical format
  • A programming model that strongly separates interfaces from implementations and that supports a generic service invocation mechanism that is totally independent of the implementation and that only involves dealing with interfaces
  • An integrated set of tools and products that supports development roles and preserves their separation

The following sections elaborate on each of these ingredients.

Clear Separation of Roles

A business integration project requires people in four collaborative, but distinctly separate, roles:

  • Business analyst: Business analysts are domain experts responsible for capturing the business aspects of a process and for creating a process model that adequately represents the process itself. Their focus is to optimize the financial performance of a process. Business analysts are not concerned with the technical aspects of implementing processes.
  • Component developer: Component developers are responsible for implementing individual services and components. Their focus is the specific technology used for the implementation. This role requires a strong programming background.
  • Integration specialist: This relatively new role describes the person who is responsible for assembling a set of existing components into a larger business integration solution. Integration developers do not need to know the technical details of each of the components and services they reuse and wire together. Ideally, integration developers are concerned only with understanding the interfaces of the services that they are assembling. Integration developers should rely on integration tools for the assembly process.
  • Solution deployer: Solution deployers and administrators are concerned with making business integration solutions available to end users. Ideally, a solution deployer is primarily concerned with binding a solution to the physical resources ready for it to function (databases, queue managers, and so on) and not with having a deep understanding of the internals of a solution. The solution deployer's focus is quality of service (QoS).

A Common Business Object Model

As we discussed, the key aspects of a business integration project include the ability to coordinate the invocation of several components and the ability to handle the data exchange among those. In particular, different components can use different techniques to represent business items such as the data in an order, a customer's information, and so on. For example, you might have to integrate a Java application that uses entity Enterprise Java Beans (EJBs) to represent business items and a legacy application that organizes information in COBOL copybooks. Therefore, a platform that aims to simplify the creation of integration solutions should also provide a generic way to represent business items, irrespective of the techniques used by the back-end systems for data handling. This goal is achieved in WPS and WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus (WESB) thanks to the business object framework.

The business object framework enables developers to use XML Schemas to define the structure of business data and access and manipulate instances of these data structures (business objects) via XPath or Java code. The business object framework is based on the Service Data Object (SDO) standard.

The Service Component Architecture (SCA) Programming Model

The SCA programming model represents the foundation for any solution to be developed on WPS and WESB.

SCA provides a way for developers to encapsulate service implementations in reusable components. It enables you to define interfaces, implementations, and references in a technology-agnostic way, giving you the opportunity to bind the elements to whichever technology you choose.

There is also an SCA client programming model that enables the invocation of those components. In particular, it enables runtime infrastructures based on Java—such as IBM's WebSphere Process Server, BEA's WebLogic Server (with its Aqualogic product family), and Oracle's Application Server (part of Oracle's Fusion Middleware family)—to interact with non-Java runtimes. SCA uses business objects as the data items for service invocation.

Tools and Products

IBM's WebSphere Integration Developer is the integrated development environment that has all the necessary tools to create and compose business integration solutions based on the technologies just mentioned. These solutions typically are deployed to the WPS or, in some cases, to the WESB—the products that are at the center of this book.

Now that you understand the key ingredients of business integration solutions, let's take a look at the business object framework, at SCA, and at some of the key patterns, processes, and qualifiers in more detail.

InformIT Promotional Mailings & Special Offers

I would like to receive exclusive offers and hear about products from InformIT and its family of brands. I can unsubscribe at any time.

Overview


Pearson Education, Inc., 221 River Street, Hoboken, New Jersey 07030, (Pearson) presents this site to provide information about products and services that can be purchased through this site.

This privacy notice provides an overview of our commitment to privacy and describes how we collect, protect, use and share personal information collected through this site. Please note that other Pearson websites and online products and services have their own separate privacy policies.

Collection and Use of Information


To conduct business and deliver products and services, Pearson collects and uses personal information in several ways in connection with this site, including:

Questions and Inquiries

For inquiries and questions, we collect the inquiry or question, together with name, contact details (email address, phone number and mailing address) and any other additional information voluntarily submitted to us through a Contact Us form or an email. We use this information to address the inquiry and respond to the question.

Online Store

For orders and purchases placed through our online store on this site, we collect order details, name, institution name and address (if applicable), email address, phone number, shipping and billing addresses, credit/debit card information, shipping options and any instructions. We use this information to complete transactions, fulfill orders, communicate with individuals placing orders or visiting the online store, and for related purposes.

Surveys

Pearson may offer opportunities to provide feedback or participate in surveys, including surveys evaluating Pearson products, services or sites. Participation is voluntary. Pearson collects information requested in the survey questions and uses the information to evaluate, support, maintain and improve products, services or sites, develop new products and services, conduct educational research and for other purposes specified in the survey.

Contests and Drawings

Occasionally, we may sponsor a contest or drawing. Participation is optional. Pearson collects name, contact information and other information specified on the entry form for the contest or drawing to conduct the contest or drawing. Pearson may collect additional personal information from the winners of a contest or drawing in order to award the prize and for tax reporting purposes, as required by law.

Newsletters

If you have elected to receive email newsletters or promotional mailings and special offers but want to unsubscribe, simply email information@informit.com.

Service Announcements

On rare occasions it is necessary to send out a strictly service related announcement. For instance, if our service is temporarily suspended for maintenance we might send users an email. Generally, users may not opt-out of these communications, though they can deactivate their account information. However, these communications are not promotional in nature.

Customer Service

We communicate with users on a regular basis to provide requested services and in regard to issues relating to their account we reply via email or phone in accordance with the users' wishes when a user submits their information through our Contact Us form.

Other Collection and Use of Information


Application and System Logs

Pearson automatically collects log data to help ensure the delivery, availability and security of this site. Log data may include technical information about how a user or visitor connected to this site, such as browser type, type of computer/device, operating system, internet service provider and IP address. We use this information for support purposes and to monitor the health of the site, identify problems, improve service, detect unauthorized access and fraudulent activity, prevent and respond to security incidents and appropriately scale computing resources.

Web Analytics

Pearson may use third party web trend analytical services, including Google Analytics, to collect visitor information, such as IP addresses, browser types, referring pages, pages visited and time spent on a particular site. While these analytical services collect and report information on an anonymous basis, they may use cookies to gather web trend information. The information gathered may enable Pearson (but not the third party web trend services) to link information with application and system log data. Pearson uses this information for system administration and to identify problems, improve service, detect unauthorized access and fraudulent activity, prevent and respond to security incidents, appropriately scale computing resources and otherwise support and deliver this site and its services.

Cookies and Related Technologies

This site uses cookies and similar technologies to personalize content, measure traffic patterns, control security, track use and access of information on this site, and provide interest-based messages and advertising. Users can manage and block the use of cookies through their browser. Disabling or blocking certain cookies may limit the functionality of this site.

Do Not Track

This site currently does not respond to Do Not Track signals.

Security


Pearson uses appropriate physical, administrative and technical security measures to protect personal information from unauthorized access, use and disclosure.

Children


This site is not directed to children under the age of 13.

Marketing


Pearson may send or direct marketing communications to users, provided that

  • Pearson will not use personal information collected or processed as a K-12 school service provider for the purpose of directed or targeted advertising.
  • Such marketing is consistent with applicable law and Pearson's legal obligations.
  • Pearson will not knowingly direct or send marketing communications to an individual who has expressed a preference not to receive marketing.
  • Where required by applicable law, express or implied consent to marketing exists and has not been withdrawn.

Pearson may provide personal information to a third party service provider on a restricted basis to provide marketing solely on behalf of Pearson or an affiliate or customer for whom Pearson is a service provider. Marketing preferences may be changed at any time.

Correcting/Updating Personal Information


If a user's personally identifiable information changes (such as your postal address or email address), we provide a way to correct or update that user's personal data provided to us. This can be done on the Account page. If a user no longer desires our service and desires to delete his or her account, please contact us at customer-service@informit.com and we will process the deletion of a user's account.

Choice/Opt-out


Users can always make an informed choice as to whether they should proceed with certain services offered by InformIT. If you choose to remove yourself from our mailing list(s) simply visit the following page and uncheck any communication you no longer want to receive: www.informit.com/u.aspx.

Sale of Personal Information


Pearson does not rent or sell personal information in exchange for any payment of money.

While Pearson does not sell personal information, as defined in Nevada law, Nevada residents may email a request for no sale of their personal information to NevadaDesignatedRequest@pearson.com.

Supplemental Privacy Statement for California Residents


California residents should read our Supplemental privacy statement for California residents in conjunction with this Privacy Notice. The Supplemental privacy statement for California residents explains Pearson's commitment to comply with California law and applies to personal information of California residents collected in connection with this site and the Services.

Sharing and Disclosure


Pearson may disclose personal information, as follows:

  • As required by law.
  • With the consent of the individual (or their parent, if the individual is a minor)
  • In response to a subpoena, court order or legal process, to the extent permitted or required by law
  • To protect the security and safety of individuals, data, assets and systems, consistent with applicable law
  • In connection the sale, joint venture or other transfer of some or all of its company or assets, subject to the provisions of this Privacy Notice
  • To investigate or address actual or suspected fraud or other illegal activities
  • To exercise its legal rights, including enforcement of the Terms of Use for this site or another contract
  • To affiliated Pearson companies and other companies and organizations who perform work for Pearson and are obligated to protect the privacy of personal information consistent with this Privacy Notice
  • To a school, organization, company or government agency, where Pearson collects or processes the personal information in a school setting or on behalf of such organization, company or government agency.

Links


This web site contains links to other sites. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every web site that collects Personal Information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by this web site.

Requests and Contact


Please contact us about this Privacy Notice or if you have any requests or questions relating to the privacy of your personal information.

Changes to this Privacy Notice


We may revise this Privacy Notice through an updated posting. We will identify the effective date of the revision in the posting. Often, updates are made to provide greater clarity or to comply with changes in regulatory requirements. If the updates involve material changes to the collection, protection, use or disclosure of Personal Information, Pearson will provide notice of the change through a conspicuous notice on this site or other appropriate way. Continued use of the site after the effective date of a posted revision evidences acceptance. Please contact us if you have questions or concerns about the Privacy Notice or any objection to any revisions.

Last Update: November 17, 2020