Motivation for the use of the ESB and SOA technology
Companies need to stay flexible and be able to change their internal processes when the market evolves. This means they need to redistribute the consisting tasks, optimize their processes and even outsource specific tasks to third parties. The success of these changes depends on the ICT department, which must be able to carry out changes smoothly and cost effectively.
The good news is that computer technology has evolved over the last few years in order to answer these ICT challenges companies are facing. The answer to this is the Service Orientated Architecture, (SOA), where monolithic coding on one computer system is replaced by components which are reusable, and easy to orchestrate.
Service Oriented Architecture
XBintegrator is based on that ‘Service Oriented Architecture’ technology where monolithic applications are replaced by dynamic processes, each of them using one or more services. These services are the bricks within the solution and the technical components, programmed by IT. Services are only useful if they can be approached universally, platform and programming language independent.
Web Services
Web services, available thanks to XML, offer important protocols with which the set-up can be reached. The first protocol WSDL (Web Service Definition Language) describes a service provider with all the individual services it supports. It is a detailed guide for programmers to know which services are available and how they can be called upon. The second protocol is named SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol). It is used to address services from within a program. Both protocols have a range of versions and modifications and are used depending on the applications.
ESB environment
The second important evolution in IT is that we no longer bring these services together within a program but we bring them together in an environment which no longer needs programming. This environment is an ESB, an Enterprise Service Bus. Services are grouped together through an orchestrate function. This gives us very dynamic, simple and viewable application constructions.
By using an ESB with SOA technology, every company is able to quickly anticipate to the ever changing and more demanding market where IT will define the strategic advantage. The ESB is an important advantage for implementation and optimization.
XBintegrator version 4 is based on modern concepts and technologies, which enables companies to integrate back-office applications and to exchange data by using open standards (SOA and Web services) and technologies (ESB – Enterprise service Bus).
XBintegrator ESB is a server application developed in Java and can be installed on 3 important systems namely, IBM system I, Windows and Linux.