Service integration

This page provides a starting point for finding information about service integration.

Service integration provides asynchronous messaging services. In asynchronous messaging, producing applications do not send messages directly to consuming applications. Instead, they send messages to destinations. Consuming applications receive messages from these destinations. A producing application can send a message and then continue processing without waiting until a consuming application receives the message. If necessary, the destination stores the message until the consuming application is ready to receive it.

Why use service integration?

• Service integration can connect one kind of application to a different kind of application, including situations where different applications written in different languages are running on different operating systems and you want them all to be able to communicate with each other.

• Service integration can enable Java™ EE applications running in appservers. Service integration is a complete JMS V1.1 provider implementation (not just an API but a working messaging system). The JMS provider is a pure Java implementation that runs within the application server JVM process. For persistent messaging, WAS works with a JDBC compliant database such as DB2.

• Service integration can interoperate with the WebSphere MQ messaging system, through use of WebSphere MQ links, and WebSphere MQ servers.

What are the benefits of service integration?

• Messaging benefits: Use the bus to expose messaging artifacts, such as queues and topics, as Web services. The bus also provides advanced options for asynchronous communication, prioritized message delivery, quality of service (message persistence) and interoperation with WebSphere MQ.

• Secure externalizing of existing applications: Use the bus to expose existing applications as Web services, for use by any Web service-enabled tool, regardless of the implementation details. This enables applications or Web services deployed on a server deep inside an enterprise to be made available as Web services on the Internet to customers, suppliers, and business partners. Security options mean that this access can be tightly controlled.

• Return on investment: Business partners can reuse an existing process that you make available as a Web service through the bus. This gives great scope for the reuse of existing assets.

• Protocol transformation: Use the bus to take an existing service implemented in one protocol (for example, SOAP over JMS), and expose it to client applications using a different protocol (for example, SOAP over HTTP). This enables interoperability between businesses that implement varying Web services protocols in their business applications.

• Service integration technologies

  Service integration is a set of technologies that provides asynchronous messaging services. Use this topic to learn about the technologies on which WAS service integration applications are developed and implemented.

• Service integration buses

  A service integration bus is a group of one or more appservers or server clusters in a WAS cell that cooperate to provide asynchronous messaging services. The appservers or server clusters in a bus are known as bus members. In the simplest case, a service integration bus consists of a single bus member, which is one appserver.

• Bus members

  The members of a service integration bus can be application servers, server clusters, or WebSphere MQ servers. Bus members that are appservers or server clusters contain messaging engines, which are the appserver components that provide asynchronous messaging services. Bus members that are WebSphere MQ servers provide a direct client connection between a service integration bus and queues on a WebSphere MQ queue manager.

• Messaging engines

  Each service integration server or cluster bus member contains a component called a messaging engine that processes messaging send and receive requests and that can host destinations.

• Bus destinations

  Service integration has the following types of bus destinations each with a different purpose: queue, topic space, foreign, and alias.

• Message stores

  Message stores are important in the operation of messaging engines. To host queue-type destinations, a messaging engine includes a message store where, if necessary, it can hold messages until consuming applications are ready to receive them, or preserve messages in case the messaging engine fails. Each messaging engine has one and only one message store. This can either be a file store or a data store.

• Service integration security

  Messaging security ensures that service integration bus users are authenticated, resources are protected by security checks, and messages are secured when they are in transit. Use these topics to learn how to secure the service integration bus and protect messages that are sent and received.

• High availability and workload sharing

  Use these topics to learn about high availability and workload sharing.

• Mediations

  A mediation is a Java program that extends the messaging capabilities of WAS. Mediations can be used to simplify connecting systems, services, applications, or components that use messaging.

• Service integration configurations

  A service integration configuration can range from a single host running two connected applications to a globally-dispersed set of hundreds or thousands of communicating applications running over the bus.

• Service integration notification events

  We can monitor the service integration environment by using notification events.

• Message reliability levels - JMS delivery mode and service integration quality of service

  Messages have a quality of service attribute that we can use to specify how reliable message delivery will be. JMS applications send messages with a JMS delivery mode (persistent or nonpersistent), then service integration uses JMS connection factory settings to map the JMS delivery mode to a service integration message reliability setting. Additional settings on bus destinations (including foreign destinations and alias destinations) can override this message reliability.

• Dynamic reloading of configuration files

  Updates to configuration information are dynamically passed to the server if you use dynamic reloading of configuration files. These updates are available to a messaging engine even if it is not started.

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  Service integration backup

  You should back up the service integration setup on a regular basis so that it can be restored in the event of an unrecoverable failure.

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Last updated Nov 10, 2010 8:23:07 PM CST