A column article on "Systems Integration and Web Services" was published in the Computer magazine November 2010 issues. This column provides overview of outstanding issues that remains to be solved for using Web services technology based solutions for systems integration problems.
See DOI: http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2010.328
Showing posts with label Enterprise Integration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Enterprise Integration. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 09, 2010
Friday, April 11, 2008
Paper accepted at the Services Computing Conference (SCC) 2008
Paper Title:
Representing and Accessing Design Knowledge for Service Integration
Abstract:
Process construction from existing services requires use of appropriate design knowledge. For services that are mapped to underlying legacy applications, this takes the form of enterprise integration solutions. Design knowledge in this domain is available in the form of Enterprise Integration Patterns (EIP). These patterns are, however, difficult to understand; they also use primitives that are different from those used for process representation. As a result, accessing EIP based on process requirements remains a cognitively demanding task for designers. In this paper, we describe a knowledge-base that represents the EIPs, infusing them with semantics derived from speech acts; and a set of heuristics, which can be used to retrieve EIPs for a set of requirements. An example serves to illustrate how the two can work in tandem to assist the designer.
Co-Authored with Sandeep Purao.
IEEE International Conference on Services Computing (SCC 2008) will be held on July 8-11, 2008, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
http://conferences.computer.org/scc/2008/
Representing and Accessing Design Knowledge for Service Integration
Abstract:
Process construction from existing services requires use of appropriate design knowledge. For services that are mapped to underlying legacy applications, this takes the form of enterprise integration solutions. Design knowledge in this domain is available in the form of Enterprise Integration Patterns (EIP). These patterns are, however, difficult to understand; they also use primitives that are different from those used for process representation. As a result, accessing EIP based on process requirements remains a cognitively demanding task for designers. In this paper, we describe a knowledge-base that represents the EIPs, infusing them with semantics derived from speech acts; and a set of heuristics, which can be used to retrieve EIPs for a set of requirements. An example serves to illustrate how the two can work in tandem to assist the designer.
Co-Authored with Sandeep Purao.
IEEE International Conference on Services Computing (SCC 2008) will be held on July 8-11, 2008, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
http://conferences.computer.org/scc/2008/
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Paper accepted at the Design Science Research 2008 Conference
Paper Title: Designing Enterprise Integration Solutions - Effectively
Abstract: The design of large and complex enterprise integration solutions is a difficult task because designers must respond not only to the ‘requirements’ from a diverse set of users, but also because a successful design outcome must respond to the ‘constraints’ provided by the current set of legacy applications. The problem, therefore, belongs to a category of problems where design knowledge is difficult to articulate and reuse. In particular, the nature and form of knowledge for conceptual design of systems integration solutions continues to be a concern. In this paper, we investigate whether design knowledge in the form of patterns can be reused to develop systems integration solutions, and whether such reuse leads to more effective design outcomes. The research follows Design Science guidelines in that we describe a research artifact, and evaluate it to assess whether it meets the intended goals. The results indicate that approaches to facilitate reuse of conceptual design knowledge are feasible in the domain of enterprise integration, and that such reuse does, in fact, lead to more effective design solutions.
Co-authors: Sandeep Purao and Russell R. Barton
Link to DESRIST 2008 Conference
Abstract: The design of large and complex enterprise integration solutions is a difficult task because designers must respond not only to the ‘requirements’ from a diverse set of users, but also because a successful design outcome must respond to the ‘constraints’ provided by the current set of legacy applications. The problem, therefore, belongs to a category of problems where design knowledge is difficult to articulate and reuse. In particular, the nature and form of knowledge for conceptual design of systems integration solutions continues to be a concern. In this paper, we investigate whether design knowledge in the form of patterns can be reused to develop systems integration solutions, and whether such reuse leads to more effective design outcomes. The research follows Design Science guidelines in that we describe a research artifact, and evaluate it to assess whether it meets the intended goals. The results indicate that approaches to facilitate reuse of conceptual design knowledge are feasible in the domain of enterprise integration, and that such reuse does, in fact, lead to more effective design solutions.
Co-authors: Sandeep Purao and Russell R. Barton
Link to DESRIST 2008 Conference
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Paper accepted at the Conceptual Modeling (ER) 2007 Conference
Paper Title: Exploring Alternatives for Representing and Accessing Design Knowledge about Enterprise Integration
Abstract: Enterprise integration refers to solutions that facilitate meaningful interactions among heterogeneous legacy applications. The scale, complexity and specificity of most enterprise integration efforts mean that design knowledge for enterprise integration has resisted codification. Important exceptions to this include: use of Business Process Modeling (BPM) techniques to understand integration requirements; and Enterprise Integration Patterns (EIP), which present designers with abstract descriptions of recurring design tactics for integrating applications. The two, however, can be at odds. BPM encourages the control flow perspective; whereas EIP codifies an operational perspective. Mapping between the two to develop coherent solutions, therefore, tends to be problematic. To bridge the gap, we suggest an alternative that builds on the theory of speech acts. We develop essential components of such an alternative, including a re-representation of EIP as structures of speech acts, a characterization of tasks in BPM with action types, and a mapping between speech acts and action types. The components are accompanied by inference rules that produce a mapping between sets of tasks in a business process, and structures of speech acts as integration patterns. Through a short industry case, we demonstrate usefulness of the proposed alternative.
Co-Authored with Sandeep Purao.
Link to the conference ER 2007
Abstract: Enterprise integration refers to solutions that facilitate meaningful interactions among heterogeneous legacy applications. The scale, complexity and specificity of most enterprise integration efforts mean that design knowledge for enterprise integration has resisted codification. Important exceptions to this include: use of Business Process Modeling (BPM) techniques to understand integration requirements; and Enterprise Integration Patterns (EIP), which present designers with abstract descriptions of recurring design tactics for integrating applications. The two, however, can be at odds. BPM encourages the control flow perspective; whereas EIP codifies an operational perspective. Mapping between the two to develop coherent solutions, therefore, tends to be problematic. To bridge the gap, we suggest an alternative that builds on the theory of speech acts. We develop essential components of such an alternative, including a re-representation of EIP as structures of speech acts, a characterization of tasks in BPM with action types, and a mapping between speech acts and action types. The components are accompanied by inference rules that produce a mapping between sets of tasks in a business process, and structures of speech acts as integration patterns. Through a short industry case, we demonstrate usefulness of the proposed alternative.
Co-Authored with Sandeep Purao.
Link to the conference ER 2007
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Paper accepted in SCC 2006
Paper Title
Designing Enterprise Solutions with Web Services and Integration Patterns
Abstract
Web services are an ideal implementation platform for integrating disparate legacy systems because they are platform-independent. Enterprise Integration Patterns (EIP) represent possible design solutions that may be used to construct these enterprise integration solutions. Constructing design solutions with EIP that build on the platform-independence allowed by web services requires that the former be converted into mechanisms that may be implemented with the latter. One such mechanism is conversation models that may be used to implement interactions among web services representing different legacy systems. No methodologies exist that designers can use to construct integration solutions using web services and EIP in this manner. In this paper, we outline such a methodology that generates the design elements in the form of conversation policies for web services.
Co-Authored with
Sandeep Purao
Designing Enterprise Solutions with Web Services and Integration Patterns
Abstract
Web services are an ideal implementation platform for integrating disparate legacy systems because they are platform-independent. Enterprise Integration Patterns (EIP) represent possible design solutions that may be used to construct these enterprise integration solutions. Constructing design solutions with EIP that build on the platform-independence allowed by web services requires that the former be converted into mechanisms that may be implemented with the latter. One such mechanism is conversation models that may be used to implement interactions among web services representing different legacy systems. No methodologies exist that designers can use to construct integration solutions using web services and EIP in this manner. In this paper, we outline such a methodology that generates the design elements in the form of conversation policies for web services.
Co-Authored with
Sandeep Purao
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