Internet Application Integration

by John Senor

As the Internet continues to inundate all aspects of business and personal computing, Internet applications are taking on increasingly important roles. Astute companies are harnessing the Internet to connect and extend their value chains and coordinate the actions of an extended network of trading partners. Internet applications are the foundation of an e-business enterprise, enabling companies to deliver products and services to market faster, streamline the flow of corporate data, and make it easier for customers to do business with them. EDA Version 4.2.1 marks the rollout of Enterprise Integration Middleware, a new generation of EDA products designed to meet the specific challenges posed by the Internet.

These challenges include:

	The growing need to support inter-enterprise computing
	Flexible interaction between heterogeneous applications and data
	Unparalleled scalability
	Continuous availability
	High reliability
	Improved manageability

Additionally, as FOCUS customers migrate existing applications to the Web using WebFOCUS and other technologies, EDA becomes the enabler for consistent data definition and exchange.

EDA History 101

Version 3 of EDA, released in 1996, was designed as robust data access middleware for client/server systems. Version 4 represents a complete redesign of the internals of EDA to construct an Internet-ready architecture that performs as a multi-tiered application server. EDA 4.2.1 includes not only essential performance and scalability enhancements associated with data serving, but an architecture that is optimized for Internet computing using a server-based architecture and enterprise application framework.

Just as a prism gathers light and splits it into its individual color bands, EDA 4.2.1 is a nexus or convergence point, enabling Web-style computing that complements and extends more traditional styles of computing.

'PRISM' is a fitting moniker for describing EDA 4.2.1 enhancements in several key areas:

	Performance
	Reliability
	Integration
	Scalability
	Manageability

Performance

Few business applications grow as quickly – and unpredictably – as Internet applications. Usage patterns can change overnight, with spikes in demand occurring from sometimes mysterious causes. As Internet user populations grow bigger and become more demanding, application performance becomes more and more critical.

New Web applications often involve integrating a number of large systems – such as a middle tier server, an application server, and one or more databases. Performance issues can center around the integration issues of linking those applications with the rest of the enterprise. Performance issues can also crop up when internal systems are extended to the Web. For example, consider a major retailer with an inventory system that is used by about 150 internal buyers. The retailer wants to give its 6,000 suppliers direct access to the inventory system so they can proactively ensure that their best selling items are being stocked. In order to scale the system to support this large number of users, the application architecture must facilitate the separation of data functions from application functions. EDA allows this separation, enabling companies to get the best performance out of their database assets while optimizing the use of individual application servers as well.

Reliability and Scalability

Internet-based businesses are redefining the need for reliability, scalability, and availability. The reason is simple: close down the server, and you close the doors to the business. These networked business applications require better resource management and more reliable delivery capabilities than their client/server predecessors. They are often deployed across multiple servers to assist with load balancing and improve fault tolerance.

Server clustering, connection queuing, and improved methods of resource management combine to make EDA 4.2.1 dramatically more scalable and reliable than ever before. For example, Web administrators can create a pool of agents on workspace startup, with their run-time environment established and the software modules needed to service user requests loaded into memory. These agents are ready to service user connections on a first-come, first-serve basis. This reduces connection overhead and provides more efficiency for transactional applications, which connect, complete a brief logical unit of work, then disconnect.

Additionally, EDA server clusters can be established to further distribute the load across multiple computers. A server cluster consists of a number of workspace instances that are installed, configured, and deployed identically (that is, they access the same applications and data). This allows you to roll out an application to a large number of users using a single, centrally managed configuration file.

Adding and removing users or workspaces is simplified since you no longer have the overhead of administering multiple user groups with separate configuration files and workspaces. Large Web applications are deployed on clusters within server farms so that requests can be executed on any one of many independent servers. This greatly adds to scalability and reliability of those applications.

Integration

Application interaction in a Web context is fundamentally different from traditional client/server systems and monolithic, host-based applications. The Web is a stateless environment: once the HTTP server sends the requested page, it disconnects. This means the server does not retain any information from the browser. Users must be re-identified by the Web server each time they move to a new page of information.

This type of stateless application must often interact with more traditional applications to manage a series of transactions as one cohesive session. EDA 4.2.1 provides a common platform for exchanging data among both types of systems, with a new set of EDA Extenders to take maximum advantage of industry-standard data access APIs such as JDBC, OLE DB, and COM.

For example, using the EDA Extender for JDBC, EDA users obtain direct access to virtually any Java-based data source or transaction system. The JDBC Extender is platform-independent, so it runs anywhere Java does. Similarly, the EDA Server for ActiveX encapsulates the capabilities of EDA as a collection of Microsoft COM objects, methods, and ActiveX controls, so desktop applications executing within a DCOM framework can communicate with EDA data and transaction servers. A similar extender has been developed for Microsoft OLE DB environments.

Manageability

The Internet implies large-scale user environments supported by highly distributed, interconnected applications, servers, and databases. As the computing environment becomes more complex, management tools become essential. The challenge is to make incredibly complex systems easy to operate and understand, just as automobile dashboards make it easy for your average driver to monitor the essential workings of their vehicles.

EDA 4.2.1 includes graphical management tools that dramatically simplify administration. A remote management console and an improved catalog administration tool give systems administrators greater control over server resources from any standard browser. They can review and modify server configurations, check the status of listeners, queues, and server agents, start new agents, close connections, and test server components. This Web console is available for EDA Servers on UNIX and Windows NT systems. Additionally, a new GUI-based universal console called the Enterprise Control Center will soon be available. This comprehensive management station will enable administrators to manage any EDA server in a large, networked configuration from a single desktop environment.

A Unifying Framework

EDA 4.2.1 is more than just an Internet-ready middleware product. It also represents the tight integration of EDA with all other Information Builders applications, products and tools such as the Cactus application development environment, WebFOCUS reporting system, SNAPpack data conversion and reporting tools, and SmartMART data warehouse environments. By creating a tightly linked family of related products, customers obtain greater value than is possible using the individual tools. Leveraging this application integration infrastructure, customers might start by using WebFOCUS to create a read-only Web application. As user requirements evolve, the application can be transformed to an update application using Maintain, and ultimately to a reporting application that relies on derived data from a data warehouse. One set of data definitions works for everything, making technologies such as FOCUS Desktop, WebFOCUS, SNAPpack and SmartMart extremely valuable and durable to customers.

FOCUS to WebFOCUS Integration

One of the biggest areas of interest among our customer base is the migration of legacy FOCUS applications to the Web, as described in the cover story to this issue. Because EDA handles data access in a consistent fashion for both FOCUS and WebFOCUS systems, developers can leverage the same data definitions for many different applications. This makes EDA a key enabler for e-business computing.

Suppose you want to develop a data warehouse using mainframe data structures. You can use EDA and Copy Manager to stage data to the warehouse, and WebFOCUS to build a managed reporting environment for Web users. Ultimately, these tools can be used to migrate the data to a different platform as well.

New Data Sources

Of course, Release 4.2.1 continues EDA's tradition of delivering the best data access of any middleware product on the market, with support for more than 80 different databases on 35 computing platforms. Release 4.2.1 adds Open M/SQL (from InterSystems Corporation) Open/SQL (from SAP) to the extensive list of supported data sources.

In addition, support for the following RDBMSs extends to updated releases:

	DB2/6000 Release 5
	Universal Database (UDB) on AIX
	Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 for Windows NT
	Open Ingres 2.x for UNIX
	Oracle Release 8.x for UNIX
	Windows NT Progress Release 8.1 for UNIX
	Red Brick Release 5.x for UNIX

But remember, EDA 4.2.1 is not just about data serving. It has become a comprehensive platform for application execution in an Internet environment.

John Senor is Vice President of the EDA division at Information Builders.