For successful integration, it is crucial that the company initiate the integration project with sufficient resources, priorities and authorisation to be able to achieve the co-ordination of all parties involved.

The procedure for the integration of existing applications can be either of the bottom up or top down type.

Procedure for the Implementation of an EAI Solution

The principal levels of integration can be classified as follows:

  • Data level EAI (integration at the level of data management)
  • Message level EAI (integration via exchange of messages)
  • Process level EAI (integration at business process level).

The essential phases of an integration project are:

  • Business processes. The business processes should provide a holistic view of a specific company, in which, usually, only selected processes are supported by corresponding software systems.
  • Requirements. Within the framework of the requirements analysis it is necessary to identify specific players, i.e. initiators of an interaction within the EAI solution.
  • Identification of interactions. In the case of the top down approach, the analyzed requirements (e.g. use cases) are used to derive the corresponding interactions while taking account of the possibilities of the systems which are to be integrated.
  • Detailing of data and functions. For each identified interaction, it is necessary, using e.g. simple tables, to record the attributes to be transmitted, the data types used, quantities schemes as well as potential routing and mapping requirements.
  • Interface specification. The interface specification lays down the sequence and semantics of the data to be transmitted.
  • Architecture and implementation. The tasks of this phase relate to the design of the integration architecture, the implementation/configuration of the technologies used (e.g. EJBs, database, application server, Web application, message bus), the performance of corresponding test activities and the preparation of introduction.
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