Why adapters are used in system integration? Flashcards
Adapters act as protocol/interface translators between systems with incompatible communication methods. They: Resolve Heterogeneity: Convert data formats (e.g., REST to RPC). Abstract Legacy Systems: Avoid modifying legacy systems (e.g., Venue’s Distributed Objects). Ensure Interoperability: Enable seamless integration across technologies.
Why Adapters Are Used
Adapters act as protocol/interface translators between systems with incompatible communication methods. They:
Resolve Heterogeneity: Convert data formats (e.g., REST to RPC).
Abstract Legacy Systems: Avoid modifying legacy systems (e.g., Venue’s Distributed Objects).
Ensure Interoperability: Enable seamless integration across technologies.
Which are two similarities between Common Database- and File- oriented system integration?
not in real time
the point-to-point integration
Data Sharing – Both approaches enable multiple applications to access and share data across different systems.
Data Transformation – Both require data to be transformed or standardized to ensure compatibility between different systems.
Which are two differences between Message- and RPC- oriented system integration?
Communication Style – Message-oriented integration uses asynchronous communication, meaning the sender and receiver do not need to be available at the same time. RPC-oriented integration uses synchronous communication, requiring an immediate response from the server.
Coupling – Message-oriented integration promotes loose coupling, as messages are independent units of communication. RPC-oriented integration results in tighter coupling, as the client directly invokes functions on the server.
What is similar between REST and Web Services?
Both REST and Web Services enable communication between distributed systems over a network. Their similarities include:
Standardized Communication – Both use standard internet protocols (HTTP) to exchange data between clients and servers.
Platform Independence – Both are independent of programming languages and can be used across different platforms.
Data Format Support – Both can use XML for data exchange, although REST also supports other formats like JSON.
What is the main advantage of high coupling between integrated systems?
The main advantage of high coupling between integrated systems is efficient and direct communication. Since tightly coupled systems have strong dependencies, they can achieve:
Higher Performance – Direct interaction between systems reduces middleware overhead, leading to faster data exchange.
Stronger Consistency – Since systems are tightly linked, they maintain synchronized data and operations more effectively.
However, high coupling also reduces flexibility, making it harder to modify or replace individual components without affecting the whole system.
What is the main advantage of low coupling between integrated systems?
The main advantage of low coupling between integrated systems is flexibility and maintainability. Since loosely coupled systems have fewer dependencies, they offer:
Easier System Modifications – Changes in one system do not heavily impact others, making updates and replacements more manageable.
Scalability and Reusability – Services or components can be reused in different contexts, and new components can be integrated more easily.
Improved Fault Tolerance – A failure in one system is less likely to cause a failure in another, increasing system resilience.
This is why architectures like SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) and ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) promote loose coupling to enhance agility in system integration.
Which is the main similarity, and which are 2 differences between MOM and ESB
integration logics?
Both Message-Oriented Middleware (MOM) and Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) act as intermediaries for communication between integrated applications. They enable asynchronous messaging and help decouple systems, improving flexibility and scalability.
Two Differences between MOM and ESB
Architecture & Functionality
MOM primarily focuses on message passing between systems using message queues (e.g., JMS, RabbitMQ). It ensures reliable delivery but lacks advanced routing and transformation features.
ESB is a more comprehensive middleware solution that provides additional capabilities like message transformation, orchestration, protocol mediation, and routing beyond simple message delivery.
Integration Style
MOM follows a point-to-point or publish-subscribe messaging pattern, where messages are delivered to specific consumers or multiple subscribers.
ESB provides a centralized integration platform, enabling content-based routing, service orchestration, and integration of heterogeneous systems with different protocols.
Describe briefly (1 paragraph for each) DW, DF, and DR solutions for data
integration.
Data Warehousing (DW)
Data Warehousing is a batch-oriented information integration solution designed for unified analysis of disparate data sources. It follows the Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) process, where operational data from different databases are extracted, transformed into a common format, and loaded into a central data warehouse. This approach is ideal for historical data analysis, reporting, and business intelligence, but it does not support real-time updates.
Data Federation (DF)
Data Federation enables real-time information integration by providing a virtual unified schema over multiple disparate data sources. Instead of physically consolidating data, queries are executed across multiple databases, and results are aggregated dynamically. This approach ensures on-demand access to distributed data while maintaining data autonomy. However, it may suffer from performance issues when querying large datasets across multiple systems.
Data Replication (DR)
Data Replication is a near-real-time integration approach that involves copying data between multiple databases at scheduled intervals. The master (source) database updates the replicated (target) databases to ensure data consistency and availability. This solution improves system performance by reducing access load on the primary database, but it requires efficient synchronization mechanisms to avoid inconsistencies.
Compare benefits and drawbacks of the data warehouse solutions
Data warehousing - conclusion
● Advantages:
– Relatively easy to implement and maintain (ETL services are standardized).
– Non-expensive (packaged with many RDBMS)
– Reliable (the needed data is integrated into one place, and it is a copy).
● Disadvantages:
– “the loaded” data is tightly integrated by copying into a single repository; hence
at the query-time problems can arise with the “freshness” of data; for example,
when an original data source gets updated, but the warehouse still contains the older data.
– Requires to resolve possible data conflicts of the extracted data.
– Difficulties also arise when applications need full data, i.e. not only the summary
data.
– It is primarily aimed for batch data analysis.
Compare benefits and drawbacks of the Database federation
Database federation - conclusion
● Advantages:
– Enables the full access to any database (data source) in the enterprise through a single and standardized point.
– Data are provided in real time, from original sources, not from cumulative databases or duplicates.
– Users can create integrated views of data and libraries of data store,
that can be used multiple times.
● Disadvantages:
– Requires to resolve possible data conflicts of all data.
– Requires access and queries to all physical databases,
– Requires synchronization of changes (maintenance).
– Requires the trust to reliability of all disparate and dispersed sources.
– Requires the purchase of a separate tool (i.e. not included in a core
DBMS).
Compare benefits and drawbacks of the Database replication
Database replication - conclusion
● Advantages:
– Low cost integration type.
– Simple to develop and implement.
– Improves performances when fetching data.
– Increased (improved) data availability
● Disadvantages:
– Increased network overhead
– Increased data storage requirements
– Higher administration and maintenance efforts, like ensuring
synchronization
– Does not solve the problem of the schema/conflicts (i.e.
metadata) integration addressed by DW and DF approaches.
Development of the integration evolution
Data Sharing—sockets— RPC— ORB— messaging
tight coupling—————————–loose coupling
Three core integration approaches
Information-oriented (data)
it provides an integrated view of data contained in disparate systems.
● Service-oriented (functionality)
it integrates loosely coupled, reusable software functions.
● Process-oriented (behavior)
it models multi-step interactions of data and functions within and out of enterprise
boundaries.
