Stages of an implementation

The implementation of a business integration system is performed in stages. The exact details and the nature and timing of deliverables produced in each stage may vary according to the organization that is performing the implementation. However, viewed at a high level, there are several broad stages that are used in any implementation of a WebSphere business integration system. These include:

Discovering and assessing business goals

This stage begins the implementation process by identifying the business goals for the project, the system requirements, and the overall scope of the development effort.

Discovery starts at a high level and moves to lower levels of detail. It starts with the following high-level questions:

To identify the interfaces needed for the implementation and the components that will be used, you will research information in lower levels of detail, identifying and describing the specific business processes that you intend to implement, the business logic and data transformations that are required, and details of the applications and databases that will interact. Your research may include the following information-gathering tasks:

Evaluating existing components and designing new ones

Evaluation and design are dependent upon the detailed information gathered during discovery.

When you have determined the detailed requirements of an interface and the integration components that it comprises, you are ready to evaluate existing components to see if any will meet your needs. You may find that for some requirements, components already exist and can be used as is, that for other requirements existing components need to be extended (revised according to your needs), and that for other requirements you will need to create new (custom) integration components.

Evaluate each component both individually and in terms of how it relates to other components in the overall interface. You cannot complete the design of one component until you have also begun the design of the components with which it interacts in the interface.

For detailed information about designing components, see the following books:

Developing and configuring the business integration system

In this stage, you create any new integration components that are required and configure components for each business process interface that is to be implemented.

This is an iterative process that may require you to reconfigure components or revise their design. As you create and configure the components of an interface, you perform unit tests to determine that individual components function correctly. When an entire interface has been configured, you perform string tests to determine that all the components of an individual interface function correctly together.

Overall development flow

At a high level, it is recommended that integration components be developed in the following general order:

Sequence of tasks

Development and configuration is typically performed in a prescribed sequence of steps.

  1. Develop custom connectors (if required)
  2. Develop or extend application-specific business objects
  3. Configure WebSphere MQ Integrator Broker to work with connectors
  4. Configure connectors
  5. Develop message flows
  6. Unit test application-specific business objects
  7. Configure connectors with business objects
  8. String test the interface.

Validating the business integration system

During the validation stage, system testing is performed in a controlled test environment to ensure that all requirements identified during the Discovery phase have been met by the system design. System Testing during the validation phase includes functional, performance and regression testing (as required).

Validation stage tasks include the following:

Deploying the business integration system

The objective of the deployment stage is to ensure that the developed and tested business integration system is implemented in the client production environment, optimized as required, and is production ready at the client site.

Deployment stage tasks include the following:

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