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EAI (enterprise application integration)
is a business computing term for the plans, methods, and tools
aimed at modernizing, consolidating, and coordinating the
computer
applications
in an
enterprise.
Typically, an enterprise has existing
legacy applications
and
databases
and wants to continue to use them while adding or migrating to a
new set of applications that exploit the Internet,
e-commerce,
extranet,
and other new technologies. EAI may involve developing a new
total view of an enterprise's business and its applications,
seeing how existing applications fit into the new view, and then
devising ways to efficiently reuse what already exists while
adding new applications and data.
EAI
encompasses methodologies such as
object-oriented programming,
distributed, cross-platform program communication using message
brokers with
Common Object Request Broker Architecture
and
COM+, the
modification of enterprise resource planning (ERP)
to fit new objectives, enterprise-wide content and data
distribution using common databases and data standards
implemented with the Extensible Markup Language (XML),
middleware,
message queueing, and other approaches. |
