This post was updated to reflect current trends and information.
These days, many companies have very complex and advanced IT infrastructures, numerous applications, ERP and CRM systems, and other business software.
As businesses evolve, corporate information systems become more fragmented.
It is not advisable to simultaneously abandon all outdated information systems and integrate a new one.
In addition, often just one business system cannot satisfy all the needs of a company.
The integration of various heterogeneous solution plays a key role in the corporate IT environment. In most cases, system integration is a forced measure aimed at improving the efficiency of the company’s business processes.
Responding to business needs, software manufacturers are constantly improving integration solutions.
What is Service-oriented architecture (SOA)?
Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a modular approach to software development based on the use of distributed, loosely coupled, replaceable components, and equipped with standardized interfaces for interoperability over standardized protocols.
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) was introduced in the late 1980s. It was originally presented by CORBA, DCOM, and others. There are several implementations patterns but in fact, SOA can be reduced to a few concepts:
- Autonomy (independent evolution, scalability, and deployability).
- User-facing application compatibility.
- Reuse of business services.
- Independence from a technology stack
SOA Fundamentals
The basis of SOA is the standardization of relationships between applications. Each system has an “input”, where the initial data is set, and an “output”, on which we get the result of processing this data, thus, these fragments need to be connected into one whole.
The main connecting elements are adapters (connectors) that convert incoming data (service request) and output (service results) into a standard form. Due to this, the application can use as a service a wide variety of “users” (including other applications) and for the convenience reasons, it’s necessary to form the consolidated register with the description of existing services and “rules” of their use (Enterprise Service Bus).
In this way, it is possible to connect to the service only if an adapter has been developed to the corresponding application (or database) that converts incoming / outgoing data into a standard form.
The Integration Platform Magic xpi includes 100+ prebuilt certified adapters for leading IT systems.
The SOA integration solution is centralized and the Enterprise Service Bus acts as the medium.
An enterprise service bus (ESB) implements a communication system between mutually interacting software applications in a service-oriented architecture (SOA). (Source: Wikipedia)
All customer services communicate in the same way with the ESB: the ESB translates a message to the correct message type and sends the message to the correct consumer service.
SOA standards
SOA standards have already evolved tremendously, and this happened at all levels:
- Modern and diversified adapters
- standardization of interoperability through the transport layer
- description of business processes
SOA standards have been developed and approved by standardization organizations, which comprise the largest vendors. The expansion of the pool of adapters to the most common industrial applications and databases continues – there are only a few hundred adapters at the moment, and partially integration problems are resolved by the expansion of the standard adapter set.
If there is no ready-to-use adapter to the application used in the enterprise, it can be developed in accordance with already established standards, thus providing the opportunity to integrate this application into the corporate IT environment as a service.
One of the main advantages of using the SOA concept is the rapid response of the information system to changes in business processes. SOA allows you to quickly and with minimal changes rebuild the system to new data manipulation schemes.
EDI2XML Offers a fully reliable SOA, API-driven Integration Solution
For over 21 years, we have been the official partner of the Global software company Magic Software Enterprises Ltd., which provides the Magic xpi integration platform. It’s a fully-trusted SOA and API-based integration platform for enterprise-level integration, business process automation, and data synchronization.
With a wide range of certified and optimized connectors and adapters, Magic xpi integrates ERP, CRM, financial and other systems, such as SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, Microsoft, IBM, and many others.
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