Service-oriented integration is proving itself as an effective solution for extending existing information assets. Traditional approaches have focused on two aspects of the overall problem:
- Message brokers and extract/transform/load (ETL) products have addressed the problem of synchronizing data across multiple applications.
- Business process management (BPM) products enable businesses to coordinate the actions of multiple independent applications.
There is a growing requirement, however, to use functionality in existing applications to support new application development. This scenario differs from either of the above because it is focused on repurposing existing functionality for use in new applications. Service-oriented integration addresses this requirement by encapsulating functionality in existing applications and exposing it through standard interfaces. The resulting services can then be easily consumed by new applications.
This white paper provides an introduction to service-oriented integration. You'll learn how services encapsulate existing functionality and allow for incremental development.