Chapter 2. General Integration Terms

A software platform that provides the services and infrastructure required to develop and deploy middle-tier applications. Middle-tier applications implement the business logic necessary to provide web clients with access to enterprise information systems. In a multi-tier architecture, an application server sits beside a web server or between a web server and enterprise information systems. Application servers provide the middleware for enterprise systems. JBoss, WebLogic and WebSphere are J2EE application servers.

An application or process that requests services from other applications known as servers. The server processes may be running on the same or a different machine. In the context of a SOA network, a client process is called a consumer or service consumer.

Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), the use of software and architectural principles to integrate disparate enterprise applications.

A collection of patterns describing common EAI problems. For more information see http://www.enterpriseintegrationpatterns.com/.

The infrastructure that allows service providers and service consumers to interact in a distributed environment. The bus handles the delivery of messages between different middleware systems, and provides management, monitoring, and mediation services such as routing, service discovery, or transaction processing.

A specification and toolkit from Oracle for the development and deployment of enterprise applications. JEE is the Java 5 version of J2EE.

A software communications layer that manages the interaction of disparate applications across heterogeneous hardware and network environments.

The pattern of messages used by an application. There are two major message exchange patterns:

The WSDL specification defines a number of more detailed MEPs that are all variations of the two basic patterns.

See also: request-reply pattern

The capability to move a message from one transport to another. This includes transforming message data between the formats required by each protocol and managing the metadata differences between the transports. It also means managing the differences in how the protocols operate. For example, when mediating between HTTP and JMS the bridge must manage the differences between the HTTP transports synchronous, request/reply style and the JMS transports asynchronous style.