Integration Basics

What is an integration?

According to wikipedia, Integration is a process that links together different systems and software applications physically, or functionally, to act as a coordinated whole. There are four approaches to Integration: 

1. Point-to-point - also known as app-to app - approach involves hand-coding integration. It typically takes place within an organization.
2. Middleware - whether it's called object management, event management, session management or data translation - creates a layer between applications that receives data, translates it and, transmits it. 
3. Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) are designed to integrate a company's back office systems with their front-office applications using a single integration layer.
4. Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) is designed to integrate across multiple cloud platforms. It often involves integration with local On-Premise technologies and multiple softwares such as, Service as a Solution (SaaS).

According to Gartner, iPaaS is a suite of cloud services. It enables development, execution and governance of integration flows by connecting any combination of On-Premise, or cloud based processes, services, applications and data, within an individual organization or, across multiple organizations.

Common Components of iPaaS

Integration platform typically contains a set of functional components, such as: 

• Message bus for enabling reliable messaging between enterprise applications.
• Adapters to transform messages from, and to, application's proprietary protocol. Adapters often offer connectivity via common standards, like FTP, SFTP or format support, like EDI.
• Transformation engine and visualized data mapping to transform messages or files from one format to another.
• Metadata repository for storing information separated from processes - like business party.
• Process Orchestration Engine for orchestration design and execution. In this, context orchestration is a technical workflow that represents a business process or part of it.
• Technical dashboard for tracking messages in a message bus and viewing execution history of orchestrations.
• Scheduler for scheduling orchestrations.
• Batch engine for controlling large file transfers, batch jobs, execution of external scripts and, other non-messaging based tasks.