EAI AND WEB SERVICES

[#1]

Hi,

What is the difference between web services and EAI ?

Thank you.

[Former Member]

Hi Abhay,

All of the above people have explained the right thing.

In short EAI( Enterprise Application Integration) is a just a concept rrelated to integration of different applications (with different languages and platform).

And Web services is a technique to achieve that integration.

Other techniques are Corba, DCOM etc.

But now Web services are emerging as a widely used intergration technology.

Piyush

[Former Member]

hi abhay,

The main difference between EAI and web services is

EAI is a very broad term that describes the sharing of information, application services and processes between systems existing within the same enterprise.

There are many components to an EAI solution including information exchange and transformation, business process integration, portals, use of standards

(e.g., JCA, XML, etc.) and use of middleware technology.

Web services fall in the domain of EAI as both – an enabling technology and set of standards (e.g., UDDI, WSDL, SOAP), but these terms cannot be used interchangeably. One is a concept (EAI), the other is an approach and technology (Web Services).

Web Services allow EAI architects to integrate many back-end systems through the creation of loosely coupled composite applications. Distributed objects perform a similar trick (albeit they are more tightly coupled). A web service is a technology and set of standards existing in the application service-oriented approach to EAI, which is only one of many approaches.

regards

manoj kumar

[Former Member]

Hi Abhay ,

EAI is Integaration of all the Applications in Organisational Level so that data transfer for A2A and B2B scenario is possible. There are two approaches for Enterprise level integration

1. point to point integratrion

2.Service Oriented Architecure

First one is pretty old style of EAI and becomes complex in large scale Enterprises. Hence nowdays is discarded

Second One is new way of Application Integration , It allows more flexibility , loose coupling , efficient data transfer.

Now coming to Web-Services , It is one of the means of implementing SOA.

Here in , no need to change your already working Appication Code , but just need to consume already exposed Web-Service i.e talk to web-service.

So , it is the new way of integration .

[Boris-Mohr]

Hi,

Salient Differences between Traditional EAI Solutions and Web Services

A few essential differences between traditional EAI solutions and Web Services are, as follows:

Simple: There is no doubt that Web Services are much simpler to design, develop, maintain, and use as compared to a typical EAI solution which may involve distributed technology such as DCOM and CORBA. Once the framework of developing and using Web Services is ready, it will be relatively easy to automate new business processes spanning across multiple applications.

Open Standards: Unlike proprietary EAI solutions, Web Services are based on open standards such as UDDI, SOAP, HTTP and this is probably the single most important factor that would lead to the wide adoption of Web Services. The fact that they are built on existing and ubiquitous protocols eliminates the need for companies to invest in supporting new network protocols.

Flexible: Since EAI solutions may require point-to-point integration, changes made at one end have to be propagated to the other end, making them very rigid and time consuming in nature. Web Services based integration is quite flexible, as it is built on loose coupling between the application publishing the services and the application using those services.

Cheap: EAI solutions, such as message brokers, are very expensive to implement. Web Services, in the future, may accomplish many of the same goals - cheaper and faster.

Scope: EAI solutions, such as message brokers, integrate applications treating them as single entities, whereas Web Services allow companies to break down big applications into small independent logical units and build wrappers around them. For example, a company can write wrappers for different business components of an ERP application such as order management - purchase order acceptance, status of order, order confirmation, accounts receivable, and accounts payable.

Efficient: As mentioned in the previous point, Web Services allow applications to be broken down into smaller logical components, which makes the integration of applications easier as it is done on a granular basis. This makes Web Services solutions for EAI much more efficient than traditional EAI solutions.

Dynamic: Web Services provide a dynamic approach to integration by offering dynamic interfaces, whereas traditional EAI solutions are pretty much static in nature.

Read this article:

<a href="http://www.webservicesarchitect.com/content/articles/samtani01.asp">EAI and Web Services</a>

Regards,

Boris

[gajendra_bhakuni]

Hi Abhay,

In early 90s when there were many disparate applications spanning business process the need for integration became a challenge (the applications wanted to talk to each other). Hence EAI technology evolved - data adapters, message brokering and other types of middleware. EAI based technolgy go for point-to-point integration and the applications exchanging messages are tighly coupled (ie. the interaction is specific to the two parties interacting). As more parties get involved the number of point-to-point connections increase which becomes difficult to manage.

To counter this issue web services evolved. Web services provide a standardized means of dealing with integration. Using web services the provider just exposes the application functionality in a standard way which any consumer can invoke. The consumer does not need to adapt the backend implementation of the provider, he just need to know what all parameters he needs to pass to the service as a SOAP request message. The provider accepts the SOAP message performs the operation results as SOAP response.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Gajendra.