LOGIN | REGISTER NOW | SUBSCRIBE
 
print Printable version 
Most Read Latest News Blog Resources
Does Windows cost Microsoft opportunities?
Microsoft's decision to focus .NET on Windows is stifling innovation due to the specter of...

Mono brings .NET to Android
At Microsoft MIX, Mono will unveil the ability to port .NET applications to the Android op...

Maven Studio for Eclipse gets developers up to speed
Sonatype tool simplifies onboarding by giving developers a way to easily deploy fully conf...

Digg!  Digg
Reddit  Reddit
Slashdot  Slashdot
Share on facebook  Facebook
Share on Twitter  Twitter

InterSystems Expands Into Business Integration


Ensemble abstracts external sources into classes

By Alan Zeichick
November 1, 2003 — 
Expanding beyond its traditional object-relational database product line, InterSystems Corp. has jumped into the world of business integration. The company's new BI suite, Ensemble, which was released Oct. 26, is designed to provide developers with an abstracted view of external data and application sources, around which they can build new composite applications.

According to Paul Grabscheid, vice president of strategic planning for InterSystems, the BI approach offered by companies such as IBM and TIBCO are too complex. Those systems, he argued, offer a large number of facilities, such as a messaging engine, database, application server, business-process management software and a portal, but "each of those facilities requires its own development tools and APIs, storage and management procedures," he said, which are left for either customers to develop or expensive consultants to implement.

By contrast, Grabscheid said, InterSystems' approach uses a simpler architecture built around a persistent object engine and metadata repository-the company's Cach? database-and one management interface. "We use adapters to access external sources, just like the other integration solutions," he said, "but we go deep into them to read the metadata. We then create classes that represent that metadata-classes with properties and methods that developers can access."

Those classes can be viewed as Java classes, .NET components or Web services, he said, or accessed via SQL queries against the Ensemble server. "Developers can use either an event-driven or service-oriented model" to work with the integration and to define orchestration, Grabscheid added.

Management, tracing and auditing functions use the persistent object database, which stores all of the messages in the product system for future examination; Ensemble includes a browser-based console that can be used to trace individual transactions, and for administrators to be notified when a transaction fails, he explained.

Developers can use InterSystems' graphical IDE to build applications and define orchestration, or they can use their own preferred programming tools, Grabscheid said. Developers have the choice of defining integration using diagrams, XML files or traditional programming techniques, he added. Workflow is defined using the BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) specification.

Ensemble began shipping this week and is priced at US$125,000 per server processor, according to Grabscheid. The server software runs on Linux, Unix and Windows. Adapters are available for six types of external sources: databases, packaged applications, transaction systems, host emulation, communications protocols and vertical-industry protocols.


Share this link: http://www.sdtimes.com/link/27498
 

Add comment


Name*
Email*  
Country     


  • Comment
  • Preview
Loading



 
 
 
 
News on Monday
more>>
SharePoint Tech Report
more>>


   

 
 
Download Current Issue
ISSUE 3/15/2010 PDF

Need Back Issues?
DOWNLOAD HERE

Receive the print Edition?


 
blogs tab
Google Code turns 5
Google Code Turns 5, and adds a Paxos Algorithm to make the system more stable and reliable.
03/17/2010 11:16 AM EST

Test your Visual Studio 2010 know-how
Microsoft is offering free beta certification exams for Visual Studio 2010.
03/17/2010 11:08 AM EST

Microsoft lifts the hood on IE9
Microsoft is previewing IE9.
03/16/2010 01:10 PM EST

 

Events calendar tab
EclipseCon
3/22/2010 to 3/25/2010
Santa Clara, Calif.
The Eclipse Foundation

DevConnections
4/12/2010 to 4/14/2010
Las Vegas
Penton Media

MySQL Conf. and Expo
4/12/2010 to 4/15/2010
Santa Clara, Calif.
O'Reilly Media

High Performance Computing Linux Financial Markets
4/19/2010
New York City
Flagg Management

Informix User Conf.
4/25/2010 to 4/28/2010
Overland Park, Kans.
IIUG