An Intelligent Mediator-Based Framework for Enterprise Application Integration

Information System is one of the key domain in which lot of research has been done in the past few years. Applying Information systems to heterogeneous and distributed environments is one of the current research areas. Business Process Management Systems is the information systems which deal with the administration of tasks in the business processes, organizational structures, or in the related context. The Workflow Management system, the early idea of BPM, controls the workflow in an organization, data transfer, and integration of legacy information systems with existing programs and program modules, delegation of business tasks. Offering task management services especially modeling of business processes and underlying organizations, BPM serves it meaning and incorporates the WFM system. BPM supporting the use of knowledge concerning the awareness/unawareness of integrated software, and analysis of processes and organizational structure in terms of verification, modification, evaluation are key management in BPM system I.INTRODUCTION TO BPM: Combination of corporate restructuring and mergers urged the department and processes to be automated and linked together. Unfortunately it created largely disconnected spaghetti of systems and applications. Business Process Management (BPM) was born from a strong need to streamline internal processes and connections between both internal and external functions. It provides ability to model, monitor, manage and manipulate processes quickly in response to changes in strategy and market forces. BPM is an extension of classical Work Flow Management (WFM) systems and approaches. BPM delivers the maximum utility of legacy system. It is a method for revolutionizing the way the work moves throughout an organization. II.COMPONENTS OF BPM: The four key elements in Business Process Management are: Process modeling, Process rule, Process management, and Process performance analytics. Process modeling: Process modeling describes the flow of information (business process).It helps in building a model of process and mapping into an implementation frame work. Modeling requires a consistent analysis and representation of the processes. It forms the basis for the userspecific process environment. Process Rule: Process Rule is a heart of the BPM. It involves execution of discrete steps & integration of information. A process rules engine is used for this purpose. The engine is to monitor and manage the given steps by providing a flow control over the business process. If a process fails or delayed, a compensated action can be done to rectify. Process Management: Process Management is to correlate business/application events to fundamental business metrics .It enables the organization to monitor and optimize the business process. Once the process has been analyzed, modeled and the associated rules are formed. The next stage involves the visualization and management. Visualization means transaction data ranging from holistic to process-state or client state specific rules. Process Performance Analytics: Process Performance Analytics is a transition data source available for sophisticated management analytics .This data should be available on a retrospective or real-time basis. It should answer to one of the most difficult question like “how much does it cost to process a specific transaction?” By this way BPM mainly addresses four components. They are Work Flow Management, Content and records management Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) and Business Activity monitoring (BAM). III.RELEVENCE TO SYSTEM INTEGRATION: BPM can be fitted easily on the top of existing IT system. It is the Process rules that governs all the happenings and optimizes the process. BPM will not be able to work without the connectivity provided by the EAI layer. EAI layer provides BPM to gain and measure the value from the investment. On the other hand, BPM provides value to the EAI technology layer of Information technology. BPM layer offers business management the view of the message processing layer. It is used to unlock the value of the information held in the integration layer. It is also used to gather data of every transaction in the lifecycle. IV.APPLICATION OF BPM: BPM can be applied to any application which needs these advantages. BPM reduces unnecessary high losses in time critical transactions, helps to provide any critical information, practical application yield fast ROI ,better control over the information, identifying and maximizing the benefits faster, better analysis and tracking, provides enterprise-wide visibility of business processes, improve the effectiveness of the core operations, provides ability to coordinate interactions between information systems, business process and the people, flexible and easily changed by non-technical business people.

Service Oriented Computing (SOC) is a computing paradigm broadly pushed by vendors, utilizing services to support the rapid development of distributed applications in heterogeneous environments. The visionary promise of SOC is a world of cooperating services being loosely coupled to flexibly create dynamic business processes and agile applications that may span organizations and computing platforms and can nevertheless adapt quickly and autonomously to changes of requirements or context. Consequently, the subject of Service Oriented Computing is vast and enormously complex, spanning many concepts and technologies that find their origins in diverse disciplines like Workflow Management Systems, Component Based Computing, "classical" Web applications, and Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) including Message Oriented Middleware. In addition, there is a strong need to merge technology with an understanding of business processes and organizational structures, a combination of recognizing an enterprise's pain points and the potential solutions that can be applied to correct them. Middleware, on the other hand, is defined by the ObjectWeb consortium as the software layer in a distributed computing system that lies between the operating system and the applications on each site of the system. Middleware is the enabling technology of system and enterprise application integration (EAI) and therefore it clearly and evidently plays a key role for SOC. While the immediate need of middleware support for Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) is evident, current approaches and solutions mostly fall short by primarily providing support for the EAI aspect of SOC only and do not sufficiently address composition support, service management and monitoring. Moreover, quality properties (in particular dependability and security) need to be addressed not only by interfacing and communication standards, but also in terms of integrated middleware support. But what makes these issues so different in a SOA setting? Why - for instance - is traditional middleware support for transaction processing different to transaction processing in SOA, reflecting different types of atomicity needs? One answer lies in the administrative heterogeneity, the loose coupling between coarsegrained operations and long-running interactions, high dynamicity, and the required flexibility during run-time. Recently, massive-scale and mobility were added to the challenges for Middleware for SOC. However, loose coupling is not always the best approach to solve a particular problem. In order to temporarily allow for a stronger (traditional) form of coupling (like group membership agreement or atomic transaction), the middleware also has to provide explicit and configurable means to change between different strengths of coupling and various communication paradigms. This will enable servicebased applications to take the best from both worlds by dynamically adjusting the interactions between the composed services. The highly dynamic modularity and need for flexible integration of services (e.g. Web service implementations) may require new middleware architectures, protocols, and services. These considerations also lead to the question to what extent service-orientation at the middleware layer itself is beneficial (or not). Recently emerging "Middleware as service" offerings, from providers like Amazon or from the open source community, support this trend towards "infrastructure services" that can be purchased and consumed over the Internet. However, this model may not be suitable for all kinds of middleware functions, including those addressing dependability (availability, reliability, integrity, safety, maintainability). Providing end-to-end properties and addressing cross-cutting concerns in a crossorganizational SOA is a particular challenge and the limits and benefits thereof have still to be investigated.

Traditional EA concepts in the Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) domain focus on ex-post integration of application interfaces by pipelining different middleware technologies like message queuing or remote method invocations [1, 2]. Web Service enabled Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs) used in the EAI context were a step towards providing an abstraction layer for the involved interfaces by using the Web Service Description Language (WSDL). The idea of SOA enlarges by applying Semantic Web Services (SWS) technology to it. OWL-S and WSMO are two examples for concrete implementation approaches in this area [3, 4], and we will demonstrate semantic WSMO framework, and how it can solve the problems of traditional SOA.

The development of Information Technology (IT) demands the integration of systems (legacy or new), so that they can operate in a distributed way and promoting the reuse of design, code and information in a high granularity level. Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) plays a fundamental role in this scenario. It can be conducted by different means, for example, by sharing the access to databases or using Web Services (WS). Both solutions are being adopted by organizations, although they present advantages and disadvantages that should be analysed. Several restrictions can be present in the particular integration scenario, causing problems to be solved before deciding if the integration should be done by data access or WS. So, this work has the objective of documenting these problems and solutions in the pattern format, in order to make available to other developers the knowledge acquired when doing EAI. These solutions can be used to improve reuse in certain integration contexts, depending on the organization business rules.

In a dynamic environment, even if an agent makes a plan to obtain a goal, the environment might change while the agent is executing the plan. In that case, the plan, which was initially valid when it was made, might later become invalid. Furthermore, in the process of replanning, it is necessary to take into account the side effects of actions already executed. Nowadays, HTN planning is becoming popular among agent researchers because its task decomposition algorithm is efficient and suitable for joint planning in multi-agent systems. However, the dynamic replanning algorithm of HTN planning has not yet been established. In order to solve this problem, we have previously presented an agent life cycle that integrates HTN planning, action execution, knowledge updates, and plan modification. In that agent life cycle, the plans are always kept valid according to the most recent knowledge and situation. However, when one plan does not work and the agent starts using an alternative plan, it sometimes undoes some actions that do not have to be undone. The source of this problem lies in the need to have total-order plans. In other words, all the actions have to be sequentially ordered even when the order is not important in some parts of the plan. This paper extends our previous agent life cycle and presents new ways to avoid unnecessary action cancellation. This enables the agent to handle partial-order plans and to make use of two kinds of undoing actions: sequential undoing actions and concurrent undoing actions.

At present, most enterprises have a heterogeneous environment of legacy application, which lead to many “information isolated islands”. Enterprises become more and more eager to share data in business processes over different systems. Traditional Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) methods usually integrate applications from peer to peer which has many defects. In This paper, a kind of EAI framework based on Web Services (WSEAI) has been put forward, which has nothing with any platform and programming language, so it can make the enterprise applications integrated together without gap. We have been successfully putting the EAI framework in one logistical company’s WebGPS system and realized the integration based on Web Services.KeywordsEAIWSEAIWeb servicesWebGPS system

기업이 시장 환경 변화에 빠르게 대응하기 위해서는 기업 업무 프로세스의 자동화가 필요하고 이러한 자동화를 위해서는 기업 응용 체계를 통합해야 한다. 기업 응용 체계를 통합하는 방법으로는 동기적 통합(Synchronous Integration) 방식과 비동기적 통합(Asynchronous Integration) 방식이 있으며 비동기적 통합 방식으로써 EAT(Enterprise Application Integration)와 Web Service는 기업 업무 프로세스를 통합할 수 있는 방법으로써 최근 대두되고 있는 방식 중에 하나이다. 비동기적 통합(Asynchronous Integration)방식을 이용하여 기업의 응용 프로그램들을 통합한 후에는 업무 프로세스의 처리 과정인 비즈니스 트랜잭션을 자동으로 처리하기 위한 트랜잭션 관리가 필요하게 된다. 이를 위해서2PC 프로토콜(2-Phase Commit Protocol)을 근간으로 한 비즈니스 트랜잭션 처리 모델들이 제안되고 있으나 기업 자원을 효율적으로 활용할 수 있는 데는 한계가 있다. 따라서 본 논문에서는 기업의 응용 프로그램들을 통합할 수 있는 환경으로써 EAI와 Web Service와 같은 유연한 결합(Loosely Coupled)의 분산 환경에서 기업 자원을 효율적으로 관리하면서 트랜잭션을 처리하기 위한 모델을 제안한다 이 방식은 2PC 프로토콜 방식을 보완하기 위하여 Classify Phase를 추가한 3PC 프로토콜(3-Phase Commit Protocol)방식으로서 유연한 결합 환경에서 트랜잭션을 효율적으로 관리하고 트랜잭션 처리 자원을 절약할 수 있도록 한 방식이다. 본 논문에서는 기존의 분산 트랜잭션 처리방식인 2PC 프로토콜 기반의 트랜잭션 처리 모델의 문제점을 제시하고 이를 해결하기 위한 방법을 제시함으로써 제안한 모델의 성능을 확인하였다. It is important to integrate an enterprise application for automating of the business process, which is responded by a flow of market environment. There are two categories of method that integrate enterprise applications. One is Synchronous Integration, and the other is Asynchronous Integration. EAI(Enterprise Application Integration) and Web service which of the asynchronous integration is focused in the automating method of the business process. After we construct the application integration for automating of the business process, we have to concern about managing of the business transaction. Many Organizations have proposed the process method of business transaction based on 2-phase commit protocol. But this method can't supply the phase that classify the transaction by transaction weight. In this paper, we propose an efficient method of transaction process for business transactions, which is composed by "Classify Phase" that classify transactions. We called this model "3-Phase Commit Method Applied by Classify Phase, " we design this model to manage an resource of enterprise efficiently. The proposed method is compared by the method based on 2-Phase commit that could be a problem of management the resource of enterprise, and the advantage of this method is certified to propose the solution of that problem.ion of that problem.

Rapid changes in the business environment call for more flexible and adaptive workflow systems. Researchers have proposed that Workflow Management Systems (WfMSs) comprising multiple agents can provide these capabilities. We have developed a multiagent based workflow system, JBees, which supports distributed process models and the adaptability of executing processes. Modern workflow systems should also have the flexibility to integrate available Web Services as they are updated. In this paper we discuss how our agent-based architecture can be used to bind and access Web Services in the context of executing a workflow process model.

Web services are changing the way in which the World Wide Web is currently being used. The Web was created originally to support human-to-computer interactions with textual and graphical data. Today, people use the Web to read the latest news, buy consumer goods, search for information, and obtain stock quotes. However, the Web does not yet support effective computer-to-computer interactions between software applications of different enterprises. Web services can enable Internet-based software applications of different enterprises to interact with each other directly by providing application programs with the ability to invoke operations that otherwise would be invoked manually by a human through a browser. Web services can run not only on mainframe computers and server computers, but also on desktop computers and client handsets. Web services allow individuals and organizations to publish links to their software applications, just as they publish links to their Web pages. Web services solve the enterprise application integration (EAI) problem by enabling interaction among different applications within the same organization. They can also enable computer-to-computer applications of different organizations to interact without human intervention. For example, Web services can be used for reservation systems, order-tracking systems, and business supply chains. In the example shown in Figure 1, Company A (a customer) orders goods from Company B (a distributor). Company B checks the availability of the goods from Company C (a supplier), and then arranges for payment and shipping of the goods to Company A without human intervention. Performance, security, and reliability are factors that will limit the use of Web services unless those issues can be properly addressed. Nonetheless, the potential widespread use and benefits of Web services are very compelling. Web services allow disparate computing systems and applications to be coupled together, and they enable enterprises to streamline and automate their business processes.

Businesses deploying electronic commerce applications are often required to coordinate their activities with external parties. For example, some online businesses provide their customers the ability to track and trace shipments through a service actually provided by external logistics service providers (e.g. UPS). Likewise, many Internet retailers integrate their online storefronts with payment services actually provided by third party payment service providers (e.g. WorldPay). Even individual traders on online auctions now have access to payment services provided by personto-person payment processors (e.g. PayPal and Nochex). The deployment of these modular business components from different service providers is making it easier for businesses to share information in a seamless manner, and even coordinate activities between different organizations. Building on existing literature on inter-organizational systems (IOS), business process re-engineering (BPR), and supply chain management (SCM), some researchers envisage a future for even more dynamically configured business networks (Smith and Fingar, 2003). Revitalized by recent developments in software, businesses are shifting from the deployment of monolithic applications dictated by functional requirements as in Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) towards modular business components. The new generation of Business Process Management (BPM), Web Services (WS) and Extensible Markup Language (XML) standards now provide a software architecture for integrating applications residing on different systems and business processes spanning multiple organizations. The Web Services architecture provides service description, publication, and discovery, which collaborators in the business network can utilize to bind and invoke services in a dynamic manner. When deploying applications in the services oriented architecture, application integration becomes a matter of making the relevant web services call instead of a complicated redesign effort (Miller, 2003). Despite these efforts, challenges remain in the standardization of web services (Kreber, 2003), and out-

Web Question Answering (WQA) and Web Service (WS) are parallel fields in intelligent web computing. In network services, they are used widely, and they are rarely combined together. For many intelligent web applications, however, using them together tends to be important. This paper based on the study of significant techniques of WQA, WS and Hierarchical Task Network (HTN), including Natural Language Processing (NLP), Web Service Ontology and a planner of HTN, gives a proposal of WQA framework. This framework combines NLP, predicate logic, Semantic Web description and an HTN planner-SHOP2, turning question answering into a planning problem by question mapping and service planning. It addresses a transition from natural language to semantic expression, composites web services dynamically by using SHOP2, and obtains the answering that meets customers’ question by executing the web services sequence.

In recent years, the use of distributed systems by software industries and academic organizations has been increased in many folds. Therefore, the web services and a service-oriented style of architecture becomes the basis for a new generation of distributed applications and system management tools. Web Services and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) play a significant role as a middleware for software interoperability. These technologies deploy practice for ebusiness or Enterprise Application Integration (EAI). With the success of such deployments, Quality of Service (QoS) properties such as response time, availability and service costs are in high demands for SOA-based interoperability. A service composition in Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) environment is developed dynamically by integrating services from various service providers. There may be situations where services become faulty, resulting in violation of end to end Quality of Service (QoS) constraints. This paper proposes an approach to overcome this problem of faulty service reconfiguration. The work focuses on identifying the faulty services and their replacement on the basis of QoS constraints. In spite of modifying the whole composition, reconfiguration to the faulty region shall reduce the overheads of computations and service distractions in service delivery. The proposed approach presented in this paper is compared with various other prevalent service composition strategies.

The established global business environment is under intense pressure from Asian countries such as Korea, China and India. This forces businesses to concentrate on their core competencies and adopt leaner management structures. The coordination of activities both within companies and with suppliers and customers has become a crucial competitive advantage. At the same time the Internet has transformed the way in which businesses run. As the Internet becomes a cheap and effective communication channel, businesses are quick to adopt the Web for integrating their systems together and linking them with their suppliers and customers. Current enterprise computing using J2EE has yielded systems where the coupling between various components in a system is too tight to be effective for ubiquitous B2B and B2C e-business over the Internet. This approach requires too much agreement and shared context between business systems from different organizations. There is a need to move away from tightly coupled monolithic systems and towards systems of loosely coupled, dynamically bound components. The emerging technology, Web Services provides the tools to accomplish this integration but this approach presents many new challenges and problems that must be overcome. In this paper, we will discuss the current approaches in enterprise application integration and the limitations. And there is a need for services oriented applications i.e. web services. Finally the challenges in implementing web services are outlined.

Web services as a new distributed system technology have been widely adopted by industries in the areas, such as enterprise application integration (EAI), business process management (BPM), and virtual organization (VO). However, lack of semantics in the current Web service standards has become a major barrier in service discovery and composition. To tackle the semantic issues of Web services, this paper proposes a comprehensive semantic service description framework – CbSSDF and a two-step service discovery mechanism based on CbSSDF—to help service users to easily locate their required services. The authors give a detailed explanation of CbSSDF, and then evaluate the framework by comparing it with OWL-S to examine how the proposed framework can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of service discovery and composition. The evaluation is carried out by analysing the different proposed solutions based on these two frameworks for achieving a series of tasks in a scenario.

Web Service Composition is an important but challenging issue because of the large number and dynamicity of Web services. This paper proposed a dynamic Web service composition framework which based on OWL-S and HTN planning. It uses OWL-S as Web service description language and HTN planning engine to calculate service execution sequence dynamically. Under this framework, we firstly develop a service integration algorithm based on an improved K-Means algorithm. Based on the proposed service integration algorithm, we design a two-stage service match algorithm, which reduce the time cost of service match making with a large number of services. In particular, our HTN planning approach is based on several service types, not all the service instances, which greatly improve the efficiency of the planning procedure.