Camels can be stubborn and angry animals if you don’t take care of them. Lucky for you the EXTOL development team has figured out how to tame them. And we even taught them how to work with data!
Everywhere we look today we can see patterns. They’re in your shirt or tie. You witness traffic patterns (big or small) on your way to work. There are even patterns of integration – Enterprise Integration Patterns (EIP). These patterns allow you to define standard ways of dealing with messaging systems. Examples of these patterns include content-based routing and wiretapping. Read more…
In my previous blog post I talked about the SQL standard. It is tempting to visualize a standard as a list of rules nailed to a wall. However things in this industry have a habit of becoming a moving target. Read more…
Tweeting… it seems that everyone is doing it these days. But, what are we tweeting about? Is it really useful, serving a valuable purpose or does it just add to the noise of the social arena within the Internet? Does it really change another’s life or perspective knowing that their friend is “sitting on his back porch”?
Recently, I was in a discussion with a colleague exploring the impact of mobile devices as a means of monitoring system operational health and activity. We cited the merits of having a smart-phone and being able to check on the status of a back-end system’s activity. We thought about the content that would most interest system managers: resource status, hung processes and Service-Level Agreement (SLA) compliance. Read more…
“Not much, what’s SAP’nin’ with you?” That’s just a little “inside joke” when we’re working with customers who use our SAP interface with EXTOL products. And yes, EXTOL does have an interface that enables EXTOL products to work with the SAP application.
But, what actually is SAP and why is it necessary to have an EXTOL interface? Read more…
Recently, I was having dinner with some old friends and the conversation centered on our respective fields that we work in. When the conversation turned to me, I chatted up how I worked in commercial software, particularly the Integration space. I received some curious looks, like my friends were trying to get a grasp on what I was talking about. Then it hit me….What does Integration mean to someone unfamiliar with the discipline? Why does it matter? What are the benefits, and the risks? How much of a problem is this? So, I decided to write a blog, from my perspective, on why Integration is important.
First, let’s think about the meta-types of challenges that businesses face today. Two flavors emerge quickly; problems of the moment (tactical) and visions of where they want to go (strategic). Read more…
Securing electronic communications is of paramount concern for companies exchanging business-critical transactions. A recommended method to ensure a high level of security is to introduce an additional layer to the process: HTTP Proxy. A previous EXTOL blog discussed some of the benefits provided by a proxy for AS2 transmissions; this will focus on the EXTOL Secure (ESX) Proxy.
It is important to consider that Secure Proxy is not a generalized HTTP proxy to be used for all network traffic. It is a lightweight, low complexity solution designed to work for AS2 traffic only. Secure Proxy should be deployed within a “DMZ” where it can perform important security functions such as weeding out insecure and potentially malicious traffic before it ever reaches the firewall. Read more…
When setting up a process to translate data from your backend database to another format, it is common to realize that your source DB data is too disparate with how your target data format needs to be mapped/structured. Introducing database views can often simplify integration between two formats and reduce or eliminate the need for external programming.
A view is simply a named select statement that is stored in a database as an object. Using a view can simplify the mapping process by renaming fields (rows) to a purpose more easily understood. Read more…
It is not uncommon to encounter situations where you need additional data that is not generally available either from your EDI application/interface (outbound) or from your trading partner (inbound).
Consider the situation where your trading partner sends purchase orders but omits the item descriptions…this item description being a necessary piece of information for processing the received orders. One option is to require that your trading partner includes this description for each item on the order – good luck trying to persuade a buyer to accommodate your request. Another option is to modify your application to eliminate this requirement – this may require a considerable amount of redevelopment.
The solution: Create an external table to host descriptions for each partner item that can be accessed during the translation process. Read more…
Batch Integration is the receiving and processing of business-critical data at predetermined (scheduled) times and arriving in “bulk” amounts. Think of this as a large box of goods being delivered by your local carrier at the same time every day…if your mail doesn’t make it in today’s delivery then you must wait for tomorrow’s.
Transactional Integration is the receiving and processing of business-critical data at undetermined (non-scheduled) times and arriving “one piece at a time”. Contrasted with Batch Integration, this is a courier that is always on the move carrying mail from one location to another on a near-continual basis… Read more…
In my last entry discussing the restriction of outbound communications, I briefly mentioned one of the benefits of using an automatic retry option for your AS2 transmissions. Automated resending, or what are sometimes called AS2 reliability features, can be a simplifying and powerful tool in a variety of situations beyond what I’ve already discussed, however. In this entry, I’m going to talk about some of those cases and the advantages they offer.
Most AS2 applications offer some sort of automatic retry facility in case the initial attempt to send an outbound document fails. Despite this, I’ve noticed that many users ignore this feature. They might wonder what the point in retrying is, thinking that a failure in an HTTP transmission usually indicates something that is not going to resolve itself, Read more…