Enterprise Integration with ColdFusion

1
Enterprise Integration with ColdFusion

• Sean A Corfield
• Director of Architecture
• Macromedia, Inc.

2
Goals

• Explain some of the history behind Macromedia's
  use of ColdFusion, both on the web and behind it
• Show you how Macromedia is using ColdFusion
  behind the web for integration tasks
• Inspire you to think outside the web box and
  look for new problems to solve with ColdFusion MX
  7

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Who Am I?

• Senior Architect for Macromedia IT (since
  mid-2000)
• A ColdFusion developer (since late-2001)
• ...and Java developer (since early-1997)
• An advocate of standards and best practices
  (since birth?)

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Agenda

• Setting the scene a brief history of
  macromedia.com
• A look at our Online Store architecture
• Introducing Oracle Applications (ERP)
• Additional systems join our Hub'n'Spoke world
• Evolving our Online Store architecture
• Upcoming changes and future plans
• Wrap-up

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macromedia.com BC

• Before ColdFusion...
• macromedia.com was built with BroadVision and
  Perl
• We created flat files full of CSV data and ran
  batch jobs to move those files around and load
  them into databases

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macromedia.com BC
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2001 A ColdFusion Odyssey

• Macromedia acquired Allaire
• I formed Web Technology Group to rewrite
  macromedia.com using ColdFusion
• ColdFusion 5 was the (new) current release
• We learned ColdFusion on Neo using pre-alpha
  builds and then alphas and betas it was
  fun...
• We also picked JMS (Java Message Service) and XML
  as core technologies for data transfer between
  the website and the various back end systems,
  using Java adapters

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macromedia.com CFMX 6.0 U3

• macromedia.com launched in early March 2003 on
  ColdFusion MX 6.0 Updater 3
• About a dozen ColdFusion applications
• BroadVision still powered our Online Stores
• Perl still powered many of the simple information
  forms
• Later that year we launched the Flash /
  ColdFusion Online Stores for Europe with
  BroadVision for non-Flash users

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macromedia.com CFMX 6.0 U3
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macromedia.com CFMX 6.1

• We were running Red Sky just before launch
  (August 2003)
• We adopted Mach II as the Web Team standard
  (2004)
• We continued to write more applications
  (currently around 50 applications, a quarter are
  Mach II apps)
• We launched HTML versions of our Online Stores
  and rolled them out worldwide (2003-2004)
• BroadVision was finally gone
• Some Perl forms remain (it ain't broke!)

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macromedia.com CFMX 6.1
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Online Store Architecture I

• Tiered application architecture
• Front end has both Flash HTML versions
• Business logic implemented with ColdFusion (using
  the same CFCs, and Mach II for HTML version)
• Back end used Perl scripts to manage fulfilment
  and settlement functionality
• CSV (tab-delimited) files moved by FTP to ERP
  system

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Online Store Architecture I
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ERP Oracle Applications

• Rolled out new ERP system (March 2004)
• Used OAGIS 7.2.1 standard XML for order
  management file exchanges (instead of CSV)
• Still FTP based batch jobs (since everything is
  file-based)
• Some vendors (including OLS) still provided CSV
• ColdFusion application written to manage all the
  XML and CSV file exchanges and automate the FTP
  processes

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ERP Oracle Applications
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Breeze Live Online Sales

• 2004 also saw Breeze Live become available for
  purchase online as well as hosted solution
• Decided to leverage JMS rather than Online Store
  method
• Sales orders transmitted as XML over JMS in near
  real time
• Developed JMS event gateway for ColdFusion MX 7
• Uses exactly the same order processing CFC as
  batch files

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Breeze Live Online Sales
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salesforce.com (late 2004)

• Implemented sf.com for sales leads
• Web site captures leads, publishes them using JMS
• Web Service adapters (.NET) exchange data with
  sf.com
• JMS used to exchange data between adapters and
  other systems web site, support, marketing,
  analytics

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salesforce.com (spring 2005)

• We rewrote all of the .NET adapters in ColdFusion
  (.NET libraries from the JMS vendor were
  unreliable)
• Rough guesstimate building adapters in CF is
  between four and eight times easier than either
  Java or .NET based on development times (Java and
  .NET are about par)
• Leverage the CFMX 7 JMS event gateway
• Leverage improved web service support in CFMX 7

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Internal Order Management

• Several internal applications also capture manual
  orders
• Already written in ColdFusion
• Generated orders as CSV files
• Rewrote file generation custom tag to produce XML
• Could easily change to use JMS now!

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Online Store Architecture II

• Replace Perl back end
• Use same engine as Breeze Live Online Sales
• Send all orders as XML over JMS
• ERP ColdFusion application does not change!

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OLS Architecture II Web Side
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OLS Architecture II ERP Side
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New Order Management

• Real time communication between OLS and ERP
• Sales orders
• Order status
• Ship confirmation
• Inside Oracle we publish data in real time
• On triggers / workflow events, we publish
  recordsets as XML to Oracle AQ queues
• Oracle AQ event gateway (Java) consumes and
  republishes to JMS using JMS event gateway

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New Order Management (cont)

• Large attachments processed in the background
• Sends URL to async CFML gateway
• Async task fetches document and stores in Oracle
• Real time communication between ERP CRM
• Customer details entitlements published to a
  single Oracle queue as XML rowsets
• Oracle AQ event gateway consumes, reformats and
  publishes to two separate JMS topics
• JMS event gateway consumes , parses and stores
  customer details entitlements in CRM

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The Big Picture
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Future Plans

• Over time, replace complex custom Java adapters
  with CFMX 7 JMS event gateways
• Consider replacing scheduled tasks that scan
  directories for files with the built-in CFMX 7
  DirectoryWatcher
• Enhanced JMS event gateway supports
  authentication, per-topic cached publishers,
  additional initial context properties

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Conclusion

• XML provides a human-readable, self-validating,
  structured format for complex data and it's
  easy to process in CF!
• XML beats CSV hands down (duh!)
• JMS has reduced latency in data processing and
  improved the reliability of data transfers within
  the enterprise
• A hub'n'spoke architecture makes it easier to add
  and replace systems without re-engineering
  everything else

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Conclusion (continued)

• Building JMS-based applications can be a complex,
  time-consuming process (and unreliable on .NET!)
• ColdFusion MX 7's event gateways make it easy to
  build maintainable, robust asynchronous
  applications
• JMS publish subscribe
• Oracle AQ receive
• DirectoryWatcher
• Asynchronous CFML

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Questions Answers?

• Sean A Corfield
• Director of Architecture
• Macromedia, Inc.
• scorfield_at_macromedia.com
• sean_at_corfield.org