E-Business Instructor Guide

1
E-Business Textbook
Chapter 3 What is Application Integration?
2
Introduction

• What happens if eBusiness applications do NOT
  interact with companys core line of business
  systems?
• Companys goals for eBusiness will not be met
• Customers will become frustrated
• eBusiness project will be a failure
• Stages 3 and above in eBusiness solutions
• Extending enterprise systems to the web
• eBusiness cannot be disconnected from these core
  systems
• Commitment, planning, investment of time and
  money
• eBusiness is typically implemented in phases
• Commitment to maintenance and growth is essential

3
eBusiness Objectives

• Motives for moving toward eBusiness
• Increase Market Share and Revenues
• Improve Customer Service
• Increase Operational Efficiencies
• Competitive Advantage
• Objectives and priorities must be clearly
  identified and agreed upon at the onset of an
  eBusiness project
• Quick and dirty eBusiness interfaces, which do
  not integrate with the core legacy applications,
  often will not truly address the business
  objectives

4
Integrated eBusiness Solution

• Before marrying eBusiness with enterprise
  systems, get to know what these legacy systems
  are all about
• Parts of a legacy application suite
• Database file structures
• Business Rules, Data Integrity Constraints
• Business Functions
• User Interface

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Sample Legacy Application Parts
6
eBusiness Integration Approaches

• Direct access to legacy system database files
• Legacy screen capture techniques
• API calls to legacy application modules
• Import/Export mechanisms or files
• Custom, transformation routines
• Dynamic, object messaging interfaces

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Direct access to legacy system database files

• eBusiness applications could read and write data
  directly to the corporate database, as shown
  below

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Legacy screen capture techniques

• Browser Screen Scraping
• Legacy screens are displayed over the web, with
  technology that makes them look more web-like and
  operate in a browser friendly manner
• Batch Screen Interaction
• Where an eBusiness application can call the
  screens (like an API) of a legacy system and
  retrieve output

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API calls to legacy application modules
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Import/Export mechanisms or files

• Often set up for bringing standard transactions
  into packaged software
• A common example is EDI Order Import files and
  related programs

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Custom, transformation routines

• Can be run at regular intervals to
• Convert legacy database information into smaller,
  simplified, eBusiness database files
• Upload web transactions from the eBusiness system
  back to legacy database
• This approach is common for integration
• eBusiness system is hosted using different
  technology and possibly a different platform (or
  even an external company) from the core business
  systems

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Dynamic, object messaging interfaces

• Newer technology in which application components
  can be reused between modules and even external
  applications
• Example
• Providing the capability for XML messaging
  between programs

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Application Integration and Stages of eBusiness

• Stage 1 Web Presence
• Stage 2 Basic Intelligence
• Stage 3 eBusiness
• Stage 4 Innovation
• Stage 5 Trading Partner Relationships
• Stage 6 Distributed Application Componentry

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Stage 1 Web Presence

• No need to integrate with back end business
  systems
• However, a company planning to grow their site
  would begin setting up eBusiness infrastructure
  internally by
• Selecting hardware platform to be used for
  eBusiness
• Selecting web serving software (then install and
  configure it)
• Addressing networking requirements
• Connecting web server to Internet via ISP and
  register domain name
• Establishing standards for visual look and feel,
  corporate image, navigational style
• Developing initial HTML pages, graphics,
  directories, and configuration for serving up
  static pages

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Stage 2 Basic Intelligence

• Requirement to use back office application suite
  and databases starts to come into play
• Minimal programming on server side
• Minimal integration with server apps and
  databases
• Development primarily consists of
• HTML and client side objects that can be
  downloaded and run on the client browser
• Initial data capture pages and inquiries against
  back end information structures
• Search capabilities on the site for visitors to
  more easily find what they are looking for
• Meta tags within HTML for search engines to find
  content

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Stage 3 eBusiness

• NOW, the need to integrate with back office
  systems becomes critical
• As the site evolves to provide full online
  capabilities, such as order processing, order
  status, product catalogs, A/R inquiry,
  manufacturing specifications, inventory
  availability
• Must implement one or more of the integration
  approaches discussed in the previous slides

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Stage 4 Innovation

• Level of eBusiness integration becomes more
  sophisticated to achieve innovative eBusiness and
  electronic Customer Relationship Management
• Integration should be tight, well-defined, and
  efficient
• Emphasis on more access to historical data on
  customers and their buying patterns
• This involves more advanced data capture
  techniques and the use of the history data from
  both the legacy and eBusiness applications to
  help drive the eBusiness site

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Stage 5 Trading Partners

• Dynamic interaction between trading partners
  business application suites demands tight back
  end integration
• Emphasis on immediate allocation of inventory and
  immediate shipping notices
• Orders should go directly from the customer
  system into the vendors back end order
  processing system
• To accommodate direct interaction
• Integration approaches involving direct database
  access or direct API calls will often be required

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Stage 6 Distributed Application Componentry

• Traditional legacy applications will need to be
  significantly re-architected
• Integration will be tight at all levels
• The integration approach involving dynamic object
  messaging will likely be required

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State Management Techniques

• Dynamic and event-driven web interfaces are
  stateless
• For example, a user may start down the process of
  placing an order or changing a shipment date and
  then bail out at the last minute and jump to
  another site
• From an application development perspective, the
  statelessness of the web may seem somewhat
  limiting
• A typical business system generally has a series
  of input and output screens and various paths
  that an application can take
• Each screen is presented based on previous user
  input or results

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State Management Techniques

• Parameter passing
• Cookies
• Environment variables
• User authentication
• Transaction processors

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Scalability of Legacy Applications

• To easily migrate legacy apps to an eBusiness
  framework, consider the following factors
• Database
• Encapsulation
• Modularity
• Technology
• Skills Availability
• End Application

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Tips for Moving to eBusiness

• Using the six factors from previous slide,
  realize the effects of your design decisions on
  scalability of your web application
• Options for back-end eCommerce database
• Model an entirely new database
• Use a mixture of the existing database (for
  display data) and new files (to store transaction
  data)
• Develop the entire e-commerce application over
  the same database that is used for other
  corporate systems as in the integration approach
  of directly accessing legacy files

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Tips for Moving to eBusiness

• Maintaining object business rules, for use by
  various applications, is important when extending
  a system to the web
• Design site so that both visual and functional
  components can be easily maintained and reused
• Plan and budget for the inevitable maintenance,
  support, and skills transfer that needs to occur
• It is important that the tools and platforms used
  for the project will fit in with the
  organizations existing IT environment and skill
  sets

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Tips for Moving to eBusiness

• The new site should provide the company with the
  opportunity to not only process their
  transactions but to market and upsell to their
  customers at the same time
• The user interface must be very easy to use and
  visually pleasing, with a sales and marketing
  orientation
• The application must be flexible enough so that
  it can easily be changed and grow as marketing
  demands and as new technologies become mainstream
• Maintenance will be constant

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Summary

• Key to the success of any eBusiness strategy lies
  in how well the integration between legacy
  applications and eBusiness solutions is
  orchestrated
• Various methods for integrating eBusiness and
  legacy applications were discussed
• eBusiness application architects have big
  challenges
• Figure out how the integration works
• Figure how the front end user interface will
  behave in a dynamic, web-like manner while
  staying true to the procedural aspect of business
  transaction processing in the back end
• A state-of-the-art eBusiness solution will have
• Standards of how the site will operate and appear
  to the user
• Requirements documented and agreed upon
• Considerations for how future needs and
  technologies will be accommodated