EAI

Maintaining consistent data among systems

There are several ways to ensure information are consistent among systems.

Let’s examine two approaches.

You can store information in a sigle system and other systems query this first one.

Another approach is to replicate data among systems.

An important point to consider is the behaviour of the environment when a new system is added.

In the first approach there is a new system querying the provider of the data.

In the second approach the information must be delivered to one more system.

Both approaches above require care, but the second is more dangerous.

Depending of the number of control messages, the amount of data being transferred will exponentially increase.

The integration architecture can also affect the environment performance. If filters are not used, all the messages will be delivered to the new system increasing the traffic in an unnecessary way.

So, when you are designing your environment think how new systems will be added.

ARTS: Standards for retail market

Who is developing products must pay attention to standards. Standards are essential to ensure interoperability among different vendors.

Organizations like Oasis and W3C have developed many generic standards. These standards are applicable to different markets.

The Association for Retail Technology Standards (ARTS) of the National Retail Federation is a retailer-driven membership organization dedicated to creating an open environment where both retailers and technology vendors work together to create international retail technology standards.

ARTS developed standards for Data Model, Point of Sale (POS), Reuqests for Proposal (RFP) and XML.

ARTS XML committee has developed 15 XML schemas like Customer, Price and Inventory. Furthermore, ARTS released an XML Best Practices document.

ARTS announced at January, 2008, the release of the SOA Blueprint for Retail and associated SOA Best Practices technical reports.

“The Blueprint describes the infrastructure components, tools, models for business services and how ARTS standards can ensure success in companies’ SOA implementation. While SOA is a generic infrastructure strategy that can be implemented by any industry, the differentiator is in the business services (functions). The ARTS Blueprint is specific to retail, defining many SOA services by the retail functions Buy, Sell, Logistics and Administer.”

Retail technology vendors must follow closely the standard development at ARTS.

SOA and Enterprise Architecture

Some definitions of Enterprise Architecture (EA).

1. Enterprise Architecture is a complete expression of the enterprise; a master plan which “acts as a collaboration force” between aspects of business planning such as goals, visions, strategies and governance principles; aspects of business operations such as business terms, organization structures, processes and data; aspects of automation such as information systems and databases; and the enabling technological infrastructure of the business such as computers, operating systems and networks.

2. An enterprise architecture (EA) is a conceptual blueprint that defines the structure and operation of an organization.

3. The EA is:
What: The structure of an Enterprise and its blueprint describing.
How: How the Enterprise operates and the processes executed by.
Whom: People.
Which: The technology implementing processes.
Where: Showing the location of people and technology.
Why: To streamline, align, blueprint, strategically plan, and confer agility.
When: According to the Enterprise transformation plan to a target state.

4. Enterprise architecture is an agency-wide framework for incorporating business processes, information flows, applications, and infrastructure to support agency goals.

5. Enterprise architecture is the organizing logic for business processes and IT infrastructure.

EA is about describing business and mapping businees to IT systems. It is about guaranteeing that the systems really implement what users need. EA describes which system is responsible for each information asset.

Having an Enterprise Architecture is a key factor to a successful SOA initiative. Analyzing Enterprise Architecture helps to identify required services for the SOA infrastructure.

Assigning responsibility for the services is part of SOA Governance. EA also helps to do this.

If a company does not have an enterprise architecture, it is very recommended embracing SOA and EA together.

Warning: Excessive status message is costly and counterproductive

Control and monitoring are essential features of an EAI environment.

Status message has the main role in monitoring. When a data message is processed by an EAI component, this component generates an status menssage. Then a tool can use this information to show the component where the message stopped.

However you must be careful with the amount of status message.

A large number of status message can prejudice the EAI platform performance. In some cases, the entire environment must work and data message transport stops because status messages can not be processed.

The architecture must guarantee that data messages will pass through EAI even if there is some problem with status message.

Moreover, it is necessary evaluate if the status message amount makes sense.

SOA and EAI metrics

How do you estimate the size of SOA or EAI projects?

I am not a metric expert, but I think use case point (UCP) and function point (FP) are not suitable for SOA and EAI.

UCP and FP are referring to the users view of system rather than a technical aspect. SOA and mainly EAI are not about the users view of systems. They are more about system and information architecture.

It is very bad not to have a method to measure the project’s product. Without a metric method it is impossible to benchmark the performance of the team.

Maybe an expert can determine how apply FP concepts, for example, in an EAI scenario.

Please, let me know what method you use to measure your EAI or SOA projects.