Business Level Service-Oriented Enterprise Application Integration

In this paper we propose a new approach for service-oriented enterprise application integration (EAI). Unlike current EAI solutions, which mainly focus on technological aspects, our approach allows business domain experts to get more involved in the integration process. First, we provide a technique for modeling application services at a sufficiently high level of abstraction for business experts to work with. Next, these business experts can model the orchestration as well as the information mappings that are required to achieve their integration goals. Our mediation framework then takes over and realizes the integration solution by transforming these models to existing service orchestration technology

Service architecture design for E-Businesses: A pattern-based approach

E-business involves the implementation of business processes over the Web. At a technical level, this imposes an application integration problem. In a wider sense, the integration of software and business levels across organisations becomes a significant challenge. Service architectures are an increasingly adopted architectural approach for solving Enterprise Applications Integration (EAI). The adoption of this new architectural paradigm requires adaptation or creation of novel methodologies and techniques to solve the integration problem. In this paper we present the pattern-based techniques supporting a methodological framework to design service architectures for EAI. The techniques are used for services identification, for transformation from business models to service architectures and for architecture modifications

Ontology-based patterns for the integration of business processes and enterprise application architectures

Increasingly, enterprises are using Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) as an approach to Enterprise Application Integration (EAI). SOA has the potential to bridge the gap between business and technology and to improve the reuse of existing applications and the interoperability with new ones. In addition to service architecture descriptions, architecture abstractions like patterns and styles capture design knowledge and allow the reuse of successfully applied designs, thus improving the quality of software. Knowledge gained from integration projects can be captured to build a repository of semantically enriched, experience-based solutions. Business patterns identify the interaction and structure between users, business processes, and data. Specific integration and composition patterns at a more technical level address enterprise application integration and capture reliable architecture solutions. We use an ontology-based approach to capture architecture and process patterns. Ontology techniques for pattern definition, extension and composition are developed and their applicability in business process-driven application integration is demonstrated

Extending the enterprise: An evaluation of ERP and EAI technologies within a Case Study organisation

It is widely understood that both Information Technology (IT) and Information Systems (IS), provide great benefits in improving the visibility of supply and value chains within and across organisational boundaries. Those enterprises which can realise the benefits of extending their core business processes outwards to clients and trading partners, will be able to create unique supply chain-dependent products and solutions. Thus, such business infrastructures have enabled organisations to expand and improve the effectiveness of their enterprise. One method to achieve this, has been to integrate Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems with web-based and other IS systems, using Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) technologies. This paper seeks to investigate those factors which contributed to a case organisation’s extended enterprise experiences, by using extant ERP and EAI implementation IS evaluation criteria; and by placing the research results within the context of applicable IS research techniques in the area

The Analytic Hierarchy Process, Max Algebra and Multi-objective Optimisation

The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is widely used for decision making involving multiple criteria. Elsner and van den Driessche introduced a max-algebraic approach to the single criterion AHP. We extend this to the multi-criteria AHP, by considering multi-objective generalisations of the single objective optimisation problem solved in these earlier papers. We relate the existence of globally optimal solutions to the commutativity properties of the associated matrices; we relate min-max optimal solutions to the generalised spectral radius; and we prove that Pareto optimal solutions are guaranteed to exist.Comment: 1 figur

Supporting Semantically Enhanced Web Service Discovery for Enterprise Application Integration

The availability of sophisticated Web service discovery mechanisms is an essential prerequisite for increasing the levels of efficiency and automation in EAI. In this chapter, we present an approach for developing service registries building on the UDDI standard and offering semantically-enhanced publication and discovery capabilities in order to overcome some of the known limitations of conventional service registries. The approach aspires to promote efficiency in EAI in a number of ways, but primarily by automating the task of evaluating service integrability on the basis of the input and output messages that are defined in the Web service’s interface. The presented solution combines the use of three technology standards to meet its objectives: OWL-DL, for modelling service characteristics and performing fine-grained service matchmaking via DL reasoning, SAWSDL, for creating semantically annotated descriptions of service interfaces, and UDDI, for storing and retrieving syntactic and semantic information about services and service providers