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Always look at these technologies first

Here we would like to give you a quick guide to some fundamental technologies underpinning modern systems solutions. We recommend that whenever possible you demand use of these technologies by your solutions provider.

Messaging

Asynchronous messaging infrastructure allows IT systems to interact without being tightly coupled. Messages can be delivered to systems that are not currently running and processed when it's convenient. The applications are physically separated by the messaging middleware. This means that for as long an application can physically talk to the messaging platform and exchange messages, it can communicate with any other application that can talk to this platform. Applications need to be able to understand the exchanged messages and to react to them.

These features make the messaging technology one of the key players when it comes to integrating applications within enterprises. This is known as Enterprise Application Integration (EAI). Utilisation of messaging for integration is very effective in particular when:

• Systems are implemented in heterogeneous technologies
• Immediate reaction of one system can not be guaranteed
• Systems are part of the distributed architecture spanning whole enterprises and providing Business-to-Business communications

Major software vendors support messaging. The most popular products are IBM's MQSeries and Microsoft's MSMQ. In the open standards arena Java Message Service (JMS) becomes a standard as part of J2EE platform.

XML

According to the researchers Butler Group, the coming phase of business changes happening due to the Internet will be as fundamental as the arrival of the Internet itself. To stay competitive, the organisations must support exposure of their services to both customers and partners, and will in turn consume services of their own suppliers. These links will be largely automated, must be seamless and flexible, and will be underpinned by eXtensible Markup Language (XML). Organisations that do not make XML a core part of their strategy will fail to integrate, and will fail to survive.

These far reaching business changes will be driven by three key factors:

• The focus on integrating business processes rather than integrating applications
• The integrated processes extend well beyond the boundaries of the enterprise
• Deployed applications work with a wide range of client types (PC, PDA, Web, mobile phones, interactive TV and others)

XML is widely regarded as an enabler for business changes in the context of the above factors. Although XML is not a solution in itself (it is only a meta language for describing and representing the data) it underpins the data communications in the same way as the TCP/IP protocol underpins the Internet.

We have experience building solutions utilising XML. We have experience and understanding of the concepts relating to XML:

Document Type Definition (DTD) standards, XML Schemas, eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformation (XSLT), Simple API for XML (SAX), Java API for XML Messaging (JAXM), Java API for XML Parsing (JAXP),

Multi-tier, distributed applications platform

As enterprises need to extend their reach, reduce their costs, and lower their response times they require applications that provide easy-to-access services to their customers, partners, employees, and suppliers.

Typically, applications that provide these services must combine existing enterprise information systems (EIS) with new business functions that deliver services to a broad range of users. These services need to be:

• Highly available, to meet the needs of today’s global business environment.
• Secure, to protect the privacy of users and the integrity of enterprise data.
• Reliable and scalable, to insure that business transactions are accurately and promptly processed.

These services are generally architected as distributed applications consisting of several tiers, including clients on the front end, data resources on the back end, and one or more middle tiers between them where the majority of the application development work is done. The middle tier implements the new services that integrate existing EISs with the business functions and data of the new service. The middle tier shields the client tier from the complexity of the enterprise and takes advantage of rapidly maturing Internet technologies to minimize user administration and training.

Applications that meet the above requirements are developed and deployed on special platforms called Application Servers. Application Servers provide the required services as part of their functionality, thus reducing cost and complexity of developing these multi-tier services, resulting in services that can be rapidly deployed and easily enhanced as the enterprise responds to competitive pressures.

One of the fastest developing platforms is Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) developed by Sun Microsystems. J2EE is maintained as an open specification enabling various vendors to build Application Servers for different hardware platforms (WebLogic, Web Sphere, Orion, Tomcat, Oracle AS).

Because of the standard specification, the J2EE application model provides the benefits of Write Once, Run Anywhere portability and scalability for multi-tier applications.