Transformation. Ease of use. Number of built-in functions. XML support

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1 Decision Framework, J. Thompson Research Note 18 September 2002 Integration Broker Selection: Technical Criteria Selecting an integration broker is a costly, time-consuming activity; you must consider the vendor and the technology. As a best practice, begin with this checklist to establish technical criteria to evaluate integration broker technology. Core Topic Application Integration and Middleware: Enterprise Software, Platforms and Middleware Key Issue What will it take to implement successful, real-time integration in mainstream enterprises? Integration broker software is costly approximately $400,000 per sale in Since many enterprises will have more than one integration broker, they must ensure that the products they select will be the ones that best support their needs, now and down the road. This means establishing a weighted set of criteria and then conducting an evaluation of the vendor, together with a hands-on evaluation of the vendor's products. These criteria include business features (see "Integration Broker Selection: Vendor-Related Criteria") and technology. The criteria below identify functionality that is considered mainstream as well as functionality that is leading edge. When enterprises develop technical criteria for evaluating integration brokers, they should do so looking both at the functionality required today and at the functionality that may be required in the future. Transformation Syntactic conversion for example, American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) to Extended Binary-Coded Decimal Interchange Code (EBCDIC) and semantic transformation (for example, Siebel Purchase Order to SAP Purchase Order), including: Ease of use Number of built-in functions Ease of extending the transformation function with customcoded rules XML support Gartner Entire contents 2002 Gartner, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction of this publication in any form without prior written permission is forbidden. The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. Gartner disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. Gartner shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for interpretations thereof. The reader assumes sole responsibility for the selection of these materials to achieve its intended results. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice.

2 Ontology-Based Transformation Ontology-based transformation uses a hierarchical structuring of knowledge about business entities that will be transformed by subcategorizing them according to their essential or at least relevant or cognitive qualities. This is an extension of the term "ontology," which has become common in discussions about the difficulty of maintaining subject indexes (see "Semantic Web Technologies Take Middleware to Next Level"). Connectivity Built-in transport from adapter to hub or from hub to hub, including support for dynamically adding or dropping new applications. It is typically implemented using messageoriented middleware (MOM) or object request brokers (ORBs). Transport to legacy platforms (such as Digital Equipment) using old protocols (for example, DECnet) that nevertheless host important applications Intelligent Routing The ability to deliver an incoming message to the proper recipient (or recipients) on the basis of the content of the message itself, and entitlements (or subscriptions) of potential recipients. Content-based and publish-and-subscribe routing Basic flow of control using rules (for example, when to execute applications in order) Business Process Management Microflow (also called dialogue management or applicationlevel protocols): Support for the execution of business logic, in which some state is maintained for the duration of a shortterm process (such as a public process in a RosettaNet PIP). Business process management/workflow: Long-running, multistep processes spanning multiple applications that require their state to be managed for days or weeks. Includes support for human work activities and may include basic business process modeling. Adapters Adapters are programs that connect the integration broker to resources. Package application adapters can vary significantly in their capabilities (see "How Adapters Can Help Integrate Applications"). The following five kinds of adapters should be considered: 18 September

3 Packaged-application adapters: Programs that connect packaged applications such as those produced by SAP, PeopleSoft, Baan or Siebel Systems to the integration broker Technical adapters: Programs that connect to heterogeneous software environments, such as: - Application servers - Transaction processing (TP) monitors - Component Object Model (COM)/COM+ -ORBs - Database gateways - Gateways to third-party MOM - Mobile/wireless Industry standard protocol support: Support for industrystandard messaging and interfaces, such as: - Health Level Seven (HL7) - Electronic data interchange (transformation, gateways) - Financial information exchange - Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) format - RosettaNet Adapter development kit (ADK) ease and power: This is essentially the integrated development environment provided for adapters. Components include adapter templates, development tools (for example, introspection) and development methodologies. Packaged integrating processes: Frameworks that define a set of activities that are used to integrate applications using the capabilities of the integration broker suite, including adapters, canonical messages and process flow Overall Ease of Use and Power Integration and consistency of the integration broker's functionality, such as those used for transformation, business process management or intelligent routing Support for partitioning of labor (for example, business analysts for process definition, system architect for message design, software developers for adapter development) Support for the programming language or languages that have been chosen as the enterprise standard 18 September

4 Message Warehouse A message warehouse provides persistent storage for messages that transit the integration broker. It is similar to a database log or journal and is used for: Message tracking Auditing Compensating transactions Business intelligence (such as feeding a data warehouse) Business activity monitoring Administration/Management Administration and management functionality that provides: Pre-installation sizing and testing guidelines Central administration Configuration and distribution functions Ability to expose availability and performance data Ability to integrate with external management tools using protocols like Simple Network Management Protocol or Java Management Extensions Ability to provide security functionality such as authentication and authorization, and to integrate with external security tools Ability to use and integrate with platform management features of other technologies, such as application servers Business-to-Business (B2B) Capabilities B2B functionality that supports the transaction of business electronically. Consider the following four areas: Trading-partner management: Supports the management of business partner relationships through trading-partner profiles, including: - Protocols to be used - Trading-partner entitlements - Rules for transactions - Policies for nonrepudiation and provisioning that allow trading partners to set up a profile easily 18 September

5 Security: - Support for standards that address encryption, authentication, authorization and nonrepudiation needs - Recording each document of a B2B transaction in a database (this may be implemented by the message warehouse) - Conformance to established security standards, such as World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Digital Certificates, W3C Encryption or Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) Security Assertions Markup Language Network connectivity: Safe, reliable and interoperable connectivity for public and private networks that works through firewalls, including predefined logic for enveloping, validating and demonstrating interoperability with other middleware products in the exchange of business data End-to-end tracking and management: Ability to track a business document from its origin to its destination, inquire on the status of that document and address exceptions Business Activity Monitoring Event management and alerting Dashboards Mobile and other notification mechanisms Business intelligence analytics Web Services Support Support as a Web services provider: - Ability to expose a defined business process as a Web service - Ability to expose an adapter as a Web service Support as a Web services consumer platform: - Ability to assemble Web services into a system - Ability to introspect Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) Support for the management of Web services Metadata Management Functionality that records detailed metadata from all forms of integration touchpoints. This may be developed by the vendor or supplied through vendor partnerships. 18 September

6 Future Product Direction Vision, as represented by the vendor's plans for future functionality Support for leading-edge standards Know Your Needs Each enterprise should understand its own needs and the plans it has for using an integration broker. If the goal is to implement a strategic, enterprisewide integration infrastructure, then the chosen technology should be capable of all three of the following integration patterns: Data consistency Multistep processes Composite applications Acronym Key ADK Adapter development kit ASCII American Standard Code for Information Interchange B2B Business-to-business COM Component Object Model EBCDIC Extended Binary-Coded Decimal Interchange Code HL7 Health Level Seven MOM Message-oriented middleware OASIS Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards ORB Object request broker SWIFT Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication TP Transaction processing UDDI Universal Description, Discovery and Integration W3C World Wide Web Consortium However, if the broker is being chosen to address the needs of a particular business problem, then only one or two of these patterns may be important. Gartner recommends that an enterprise select its internal integration tools and its B2B integration tools together preferably at the same time. This way, the tools are sure to work well together. If the tools are selected at different times, they should at least be chosen with an eye toward compatibility, because they will inevitably have to interact. If the B2B strategy is developed in isolation from the internal integration strategy, developers will encounter extra work and expense later. Bottom Line: Mistakes made when selecting an integration broker can be costly. To avoid future integration tool problems, establish a clear set of weighted technical criteria. Begin with the set of criteria documented in this research, add to them, tune criteria to reflect the requirements of your enterprise, and apply them to each prospective product. 18 September