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:
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:
Ask the following questions and others that might be applicable to the enterprise:
Determine the characteristics of the technology environment. Examine each of the following:
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:
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:
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.
At a high level, it is recommended that integration components be developed in the following general order:
Connectors and the business objects that they use interact directly with the application itself. For this reason, and because creation of a new connector usually takes more time than the creation of any other component, the connector should either be identified (if one already exists) or created first. If no custom connectors need to be created, you can start the development process with application-specific business objects. Before you decide what connectors need to be developed or extended, be sure that you have investigated which ones are already available from IBM, and that you understand the relevant licensing terms for the site.
Because other components will be dependent upon business objects, develop these first.
You create a custom application-specific business object in multiple iterations, testing each iteration with the connector, and then adding functionality and re-testing. You configure the connector during the first unit test, and through iterations of development and unit testing, you will complete the implementation of the business object and the configured connector.
Development and configuration is typically performed in a prescribed sequence of steps.
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:
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: