It has become common to have applications integration. The increasing availability of the standards, as well as tools alongside with the Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), shows many signs of much simpler database and system integration than before. Presently, there are two approaches that are used for this, which have become very popular and they are the following:
- Point-to-Point integration
In this type of applications integration, there is a direct link created between the applications, with the help of a direct application program interface link, batch interface or simply file transfer protocol. The translation or the transformation of the information may happen due to the data getting transferred via the link. This kind of interface is normally implemented without taking any help from an integration product, with translation of the information occurring with the help of code at the point of integration at just one or both the ends of the interface.
- Service Bus Integration
This form of applications integration will use the technological solution that a bus can provide. When this is done, the applications would be able to place the required messages between the bus and the applications. The bus would be able manage the translation of the message formats from in between the applications.
Many organizations have worked towards creating a wide range of services that will be available online. That creates the goal of putting the product lines together in a group as well as look towards streamlining all the call center experiences. It will yield the need of an increase in the back end systems. It is considered normal for call center operators to switch towards 10 or more applications during the time when they are handling calls from their customers. Organizations can re-purpose all the information from disparate legacy applications to create a complete and whole solution.
Technologists, who put forward the idea of approaches that are information-oriented to applications integration, are arguing about the fact that the integration should happen between the databases and that the information producing Application Programming Interfaces, or APIs, and databases should be considered to be the chief points of the mentioned integration. The information-oriented solutions are categorized into three, which are as follows:
- Data replication
- Data federation
- Interface processing
A good example of applications integration is manifested for multiple applications running at the same time. When the user types something into multiple word-processing applications or documents, copies and pastes a few texts from one application to another, the in-built feature to do the same functionality is integrated among those application programs. In layman’s terms, they call this as the feature that enables users to do multi-tasking activities.
Now, you must be thinking of a solution that will make the task more flexible, easier to maintain, and re-usable. You can modernize software system, and it is a tested approach that will allow you to the process of legacy software modernization so that various tasks can be performed and incorporated into a more flexible collection or series of web services architecture.