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Domain Specific Canonicals

Integration using EAI middleware, application servers, B2B hubs or Service-Oriented Architectures delivers rapid connectivity, but can also complicate existing problems. Meta-data management can manage applications more efficiently, but seldom encompass the entire integration. Business standards implemented as messaging formats or "canonicals" are difficult to implement and to update in a dynamic business environment.

While middleware, meta-data management and messaging standards play crucial roles in successful enterprise integration strategy, they can't overcome the challenges presented by manual integration design when deployed in a traditional approach. Traditionally integrated systems are time-consuming to implement and expensive to maintain.

To obtain a successful integration strategy, enterprises must accommodate a variety of middleware, enable meta-data management capabilities that span multiple technologies and provide flexibility in applying business standards. This strategy will reduce incremental costs, reduce deployment time and increase flexibility.

To achieve this goal, organizations must successfully manage four aspects of integration design including:

  • Dynamic - responsive to message iteration, application versioning and changes in your organization's and your partner's information and organization chains
  • Semantic - focused on the meanings associated with data in documents, not the representation.
  • Canonical - expresses judgments on the importance of business information pieces
  • Model - an abstraction representation of an object, process, system, or information used to improve communications between all stakeholders, improve design quality, and reduce development and maintenance costs.

Vivat has successfully defined and implemented canonical enterprise models in early strategies of application integration, providing the ability to accelerate development, increase flexibility, and reduce total costs. In short, these are the keys to designing a strategy that encourages and engages business process owners in the quick and affordable development of networked processes. XML based canonical models are Vivat's preferred model representation.