Enterprise Application Integartion (EAI) vs. Web Services - SRG Networks, Houston, Texas, USA
Enterprise Application Integration vs. Web Services (Service Oriented Architecture)
Corporations have invested millions of dollars in implementing Enterprise Application Integration tools to assemble huge chunk of data coming from their business critical software systems such as inventory management, accounting, finance and human resource (HR) applications. There are enormous hurdles and obstacles in integrating complex business applications which are dynamic by nature and constantly changing to meet changing business scenario and market competition. Introduction of Web Service, XML and SOAP protocols are replacing these expensive EAI systems with easy to operate and high return on investment standard utility software. Web Services are nothing but a loosely coupled software services accessible thru web and provide data service for a specific business function. Typical example of a web service is web based payment processing system. Do you know what happens when your credit card is validated and sale transaction is processed when you buy something from any e-commerce website? These website owners simply send our your credit card information to payment processing gateways such as Authorized.net and linkpoint.com that returns pre-defined status code depicting transaction verification codes. Website program simply send a message using their web services and gets pre-defined set of status codes (responses) against the request. They parse these status code on their end and displays user-friendly message to you. Thus complex payment processing implementation over the internet has made it possible to mushroom online business over the period of time. On enterprise level, web services are used to render services from different department applications. For example, HR application interacts with Finance application to process payroll remittance takes place bi-weekly. Web Services offers real-time transaction processing over the web without too much effort to develop software applications. Microsoft has taken aggressive steps to explore web services and developed products around that. Microsoft CRM, Project Server and SQL Reporting Services are heavily based upon this popular web services based upon HTTP, WSDL (Web Service Description Language) and SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocols) protocols. These industry standard protocols accepted by W3C and software vendors such as Microsoft, IBM, Sun Microsystems and Oracle are relying upon them for their product development.
Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) vs. Web Services
EAI introduce new software tools that results increased IT cost for buying and maintaining a new software application
EAI tools requires specific skill sets that are generally available at higher cost
EAI applications are developed on technologies such as CORBA, J2EE, DCOM based upon RPC concept. It requires identical type of software installed on both sending and receiving end. Web Service have eliminated this barrier by implementing simple text based message stream based on XML (Extensible Markup Language) standard.
Web Services are just a standard and does not require special tools to implement. It can be developed using existing scripting tools used within the company such as Microsoft .NET Framework developed using Visual Studio 2005
Web Services are based on industry standard protocol such as SOAP/XML, which is free from language and platform specific barrier for consumption and integration.
Web Services are developed using Microsoft ..NET Framework based programming languages such as C#, VB.NET, J#, C++ so you are not required to have dedicated resource with specific skills to develop the application. And it is generally not very difficult to find human resource with these skills at reasonable cost.
Many Enterprise Architects are already moving in the direction of Web Service oriented application development that results into stronger IT governance, reduce cost of IT inventory and high return on investment (ROI) by reduced cost of ownership.
SRG Network consultants have expertise on developing web services using Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 (C#, ASP.NET, XML Web Services). At enterprise level, it is required to develop robust scalable sets of web service that will talk to other enterprise application such as ERP, CRM and SCM applications for data exchange and corporate Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) services.
Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 is free download from Microsoft's website. Please visit Microsoft Visual C# official website for more information on C# programming resoueces.
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