Choosing an Application Architecture
Learn how data management solutions can impact the ease of integration.
by David Jonker
March 21, 2005
The integration of software applications into an enterprise's existing IT environment is growing in both importance and complexity. IS departments within enterprises, as well as application vendors selling solutions to enterprises, face the difficult task of architecting solutions that meet the needs of today as well as tomorrow.
This article explores the common models for data exchange when integrating data-powered applications with the enterprise, and discusses how the data management solution chosen impacts the ease of integration. You will also learn about database synchronization, enterprise messaging, Web services, and XML as general models for application integration.
There are no two ways around it. IS departments of large enterprises and application vendors face complex IT environments. They typically must deal with a variety of architectural models within an enterprise, as well as multiple technologies that implement each model. For instance, it is not uncommon for large enterprises to have databases from multiple vendors deployed, and to also employ enterprise messaging to integrate a Web application with an ERP system.
Architects face the dilemma of designing a solution that integrates with one system today but might need to integrate with a different architecture or system tomorrow. This is apparent in the different trends the IT industry goes through—client/server applications were consolidated into the data center with Web-based applications, but now mobile solutions are resulting in smart-client applications being deployed to end users with data synchronized into the data center.
The situation is even more challenging for application vendors who face not only evolving architectures with a given customer but also the reality that two customers rarely have the same IT configuration or implement it using the same set of technologies.
An Expanding Mandate
Application architects have always had to design solutions that integrate with current IT systems and at a minimal cost. However, the changing nature of the IT environment means they also must maximize the flexibility of the system to integrate with other IT architectures.
The large number of different systems that enterprises use and the growing timeframe between evaluation and full solution deployment means that applications need to be more flexible in terms of the systems they can integrate with. New applications must not only integrate with today's IT environment but also must support tomorrow's.
The mandate to maximize integration flexibility becomes even stronger when one considers that IT departments are being asked to accomplish more with less money. Yet integration represents up to one third of a new application's total cost by some estimates. Choosing an application architecture that broadly addresses enterprise integration is a way to help minimize existing and future integration challenges.
How Data Management Impacts Integration
Data management and application integration are tightly intertwined. How data is managed within an application impacts the ease of integration with various systems. It can't be said enough: The model you choose to manage an application's data determines the ease, flexibility, and cost of enterprise integration.
Different forms of data management have different levels of structure for how data is stored and communicated. At one end of the spectrum, data stored in a database is placed into tables, columns, and rows. Each piece of data is of a certain type and might have constraints about what values it can have. At the opposite end of this is a flat file, which has no rules about what the data in a file represents. Although there are generally accepted guidelines for what a file contains based on its extension, the developer must impose structure onto the data within a file. There are relative levels of structure in the various data management and integration methods (see Figure 1).
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