EAI Blog

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mmanning@uwm.edu (ADMIN) — Mon, 12 May 2008 04:29:03 GMT

I will be submitting my exam tomorrow. Don't like to wait until the last minute, however, haven't had anytime over the weekend. Still studying and sipping coffee. Better get back to studying; currently I am reviewing the Integration Processes from Lab 4. Appreciated the class and looking forward to wrapping things up.

Another Item I can cross off my list

mmanning@uwm.edu (ADMIN) — Fri, 02 May 2008 01:54:08 GMT

Just submitted our next team project deliverable. The testing and implementation went well. Our services are working correctly. We still need to add some finishing touches, but things should be all squared away by Sunday. Our team works well together; definately a plus. Looking forward to the demos next class and the final exam review.

Project Progress

mmanning@uwm.edu (ADMIN) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 05:43:04 GMT

Our team is making some good progress on the project. We have the interface basically built and functions for the most part. It's going to be a late night on Wednesday with Mikhail and I in the lab.

rpML finished

mmanning@uwm.edu (ADMIN) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 23:23:24 GMT

I have completed my rpML document. I enjoyed writing the term paper and this was one of my personal highlights of the class. I also am making headway on the next milestone for the team project. I still need to figure out how to pass values between pages...hmm... Looking forward to walking across the stage in a few weeks; that's for sure. Can't think that far ahead of myself, still need to pass a few final exams and complete team projects. Oh yeah, and take the Data Warehousing course in July.

Lab Four Completed

mmanning@uwm.edu (ADMIN) — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 04:18:47 GMT

I have completed my lab 4 deliverable. Looking at the rest of the semester we have lab 5, the project, paper in rpML format, presentations, and the final exam. It's going to be a busy remaining 4 weeks. Time to start brewing coffee.

Term Paper just about finished

mmanning@uwm.edu (ADMIN) — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 06:16:48 GMT

I figured I would stay up a little late tonight and complete my term paper. Overall I think it turned out well. I need to add some finishing citations and send it on to the professor. I am looking forward to writing it in rpML language, based on today's lecture I think I am up for the challenge. I will try and get an early jump on this but need to focus on my part of milestone 1 for the Team Project. I will be working on the user interface desgin screens. I need to dusk off my html book and see if my memory recalls how to write html code again.

Term Paper

mmanning@uwm.edu (ADMIN) — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 16:58:27 GMT

I took advantage of the spring break week to make some significant headway on the term research paper. At first I was struggling with my chosen topic - SOA Governance. I read about 15 articles online and starting to become more comfortable with it. I was considering changing my topic to WS-Reliable Messaging. I have decided to stick it out with SOA Governance. I am about 75% done.

I was in North Carolina this past week. The weather was amazing. I hiked through some very large forests and basically tried to get lost. Unplugging for 5 days really can do wonders on the mind.

Midterms are history

mmanning@uwm.edu (ADMIN) — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 21:26:14 GMT

Well I completed my midterms and now my horizon is set on completing the word document format of my term paper.
I am taking a 5 day trip during the week of spring break to North Carolina. I hope to leverage my time by completing the paper during the trip.

It midterm time already!!!!!

mmanning@uwm.edu (ADMIN) — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 03:36:37 GMT

Wow this semester is going by fast. I can't beleive it is already almost halftime. I have kept up on the readings and reviewing of my notes so I am looking forward to doing well on the test. We sure have covered a lot of information over the past month and a half, so now it's a matter of organizing the material and my thoughts. I see that we are going to be discussing SOA next week. I am glad since my paper is on SOA Governance and I still don't have that comfortable a grasp of the concept. I bought the optional book "Understanding SOA with Web Services" so I am sure that book will be helpful as secondary readings.

I found an interesting article on SOA Governance written by author David Linthicum.

Hopefully Professor will take a moment and discuss what SOA Governance is during next week's lecture.

Here's an RSS feed you might like to check out.

I also was informed recently about this neat site that you can made donations (loans) to people in need and they actually pay you back. For example, some poor farmer in China needing to buy seed. A pool of people get together $25 max per loan to help someone out. This man then takes the loan out and pays it back little at a time.

Is it Spring yet?

mmanning@uwm.edu (ADMIN) — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 19:41:14 GMT

Brrrr...this winter is dragging on isn't it. I hear somewhere that we have received 3x the amount of snow as last year. Well, I guess the moisture is good for the outdoors. All this cold weather has prompted my wife and I to book our summer vacation.

I wonder if the groundhog saw his shadow?

At least we don't live in Buffalo, NY.

I have selected the topic of SOA Governance for my term paper. I plan to explore the idea that sound governance is the key to SOA success. So far I have about a dozen referenece resources. I plan to spend quite a bit of time understanding what exactly SOA first. The lab went well on Monday. I enjoyed working with SAP.

Paper Proposal

mmanning@uwm.edu (ADMIN) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:28:21 GMT

Still researching my paper propoal, the nice thing is I have access to Gartner. I have also found that zdnet is a good resource as well. Hoping to have my paper written this weekend. I also need to do the XML exercise as well this weekend.
One area I am exploring for the paper is SOA Goverance. That's all for now.

Lab One

mmanning@uwm.edu (ADMIN) — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 15:00:16 GMT

I enjoyed the lab last week in class and was able to successfully complete it during class.
I haven't used Visual Studio in about a month and it is amazing how rusty you get, but of course it's like riding a bike.
Now my trick is to go through the lab again and understand how and what it is doing. That will take some time for me.
I am noticing the paper proposal is around the corner, so I better start researching that, maybe this weekend.

Here's a little IT humor.

Information Producers and Consumers: Common Patterns

mmanning@uwm.edu (ADMIN) — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 21:50:05 GMT

I found creating this outline helpful while I read Chapter 2 in the textbook:

Database [Storage]: The most popular information producer and consumer by far, databases are natural points of integration because they were designed to produce and consume data, and thus provide the best interface into source and target applications exchanging information. An advantage of using the database as a point of integration is that the interfaces are almost always well defined and tested, and there are many different types of result sets you can request. A disadvantage is that the information produced is typically not bound to business entities. Thus, while you will receive a lot of information, you have to figure out how the information in the result set pertains to the specific process you are working on.

Application logic [Processing] aka API [Application Programming Interface Layer]: Provide interfaces access to information as well as encapsulated processes, additionally to application services. Because interfaces among applications differ so vastly [patterns or standards], you need to address each packaged application individually. Packaged application vendors and developers expose these interfaces to provide access to the business processes and are encapsulated within their applications w/o requiring other developers to invoke the user interface or to go directly to the database. The use of such interfaces creates a benefit for application integration by allowing externally applications to access the information found in these applications w/o making any changes to the packages or to applications themselves. Exposing these interfaces also provides a mechanism to allow encapsulated information to be shared.

User Interface Layer: Leveraging the user interface as a point of information integration is a process known as "screen scraping," or accessing screen information through a programmatic mechanism. Many times, application integration projects have no other choice but to leverage user interfaces to access application data and processes, sometimes, due to the fact that underlying databases and application interfaces do not exist. One issue with this type of option is that it cannot scale, so it is unable to handle more than a few screen interfaces at any given time. However, due to the fact that there are many closed and proprietary applications out there, the application integration architect has few choices left. In order to implement this integration type, it is critical to understand the application. This requires understanding the underlying data storage schema, much of the application logic, and, most important, how the information is presented to the user interface. Unlike other interface levels, information presented to a user interface may not map back to a database. Most of the data elements on the screen, such as calculated fields, are created by the application logic and do not come directly from the database.

Application Integration Approaches

mmanning@uwm.edu (ADMIN) — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 13:43:01 GMT

While reading chapter one in the textbook and I found it helpful to note these definitions of different approaches to application integration:

Information-oriented

-argue that integration should occur between the databases (data replication, data federation, interface processing)

Business process integration-oriented

-products layer a set of easily defined and centrally managed processes on top of existing sets of processes contained within a set of enterprise applications.

Service-oriented

-allows applications to share common business logic or methods. This is accomplished either by defining methods that can be shared, and therefore integrated, or by providing the infrastructure for such method sharing such as Web services. Methods may be shared either by being hosted on a central server, by accessing them inter-application, or through standard Web services mechanisms, such as .NET.

Portal-oriented

-allows us to view a multitude of systems - both internal enterprise systems and external trading community systems - through a single-user interface or application.