Message-level vs. business process: selecting the best integration approach - Application Integration
Author: Software Magazine

INTEGRATION IS AN ESSENTIAL requirement in virtually every IT strategy. The overwhelming demand for information integration grew out of the historic segregation of business units, business processes, information systems and data structures. Non-invasive approaches to addressing integration offer a number of benefits to organizations with fragmented information infrastructures. The best approach addresses tactical integration demands (such as at the application level) as well as more systemic demands (such as at the business process level).

Noninvasive integration options available to IT include data integration, message-level integration and business process integration. Data integration uses middleware technology, such as Attunity Connect from Attunity Inc., to access vanous enterprise data structures and deliver an integrated view of common data to distributed applications. While useful, real-time data integration cannot always support high-volume integration across disparate platforms and data structures. IT is therefore left with message-level and business process integration (BPI) to address high-performance, highly diverse integration challenges. In this article I will give an overview of the pros and cons of these two integration options along with criteria for selecting one over the other.

Tactical vs. Strategic Integration Options