The paradigm of heterogeneous systems has been demanding the implementation of new approaches to ensure the organizational operations as a whole. This chapter proposes a new integration model architecture, supported by research in an organization with great needs at integration systems level which can be applied to any situation, based on the execution of instructions transmitted between systems. The new architecture sustains the interoperability process between different systems that can be applied in an environment populated by heterogeneous systems and is supported by the use XML language. To this architecture contributed decisively different integration experiences and concepts provided by SAP R/3.
Top2. Systems Integration
According to Reynolds, (Reynolds, 2011), fundamental integration concepts include Enterprise Integration and Enterprise Service Bus, middleware and messaging, to support data transfer.
The concept of Enterprise Integration was first introduced by Vernadt, (Vernadat, 1996), as a technical field of Enterprise Architecture, which focused on the study of topics such as system interconnection, electronic data interchange, product data exchange and distributed computing environments. Enterprise architecture was also defined by Brosey et al., (Brosey, Neal, & Marks, 2001), as a discipline and enabling technology that connects and combines people, processes, systems, and technologies to ensure that the right people and the right processes have the right information and the right resources at the right time to optimally perform their functions.
According to Ortiz, (Ortiz Jr., 2007), an Enterprise Service Bus is the middleware glue that holds an SOA together and enables communication between Web-based enterprise applications. The work in this domain started in 2002 in the Gartner Group (Schulte, 2002).
According to the McGraw-Hill encyclopedia of networking & telecommunications, (Sheldon, 2001), middleware is a layer of software or functionality that sits between one system and another, and provides a way for those systems to exchange information or connect with one another even though they have different interfaces. Messaging is one of the methods that has become integral to the way that middleware is implemented. Middleware and messaging may be employed within an organization to tie together its LAN and legacy systems, its diverse clients and back-end databases, and its local and remote systems. Middleware is also important for Web applications.
Recent integration architectures are based on concepts such as event-driven architecture, grid computing or extreme transaction processing (Poduval, A., Todd, D., Sarang, P., Gaur, H., Bolie, J., Geminiuc, K., &Pravin, L. 2011).