Uwe Heinkel

Champagne: data change propagation for heterogeneous information systems

Flexible methods supporting the data interchange between autonomous information systems are important for todays increasingly heterogeneous enterprise IT infrastructures. Updates, insertions, and deletions of data objects in autonomous information systems often have to trigger data changes in other autonomous systems, even if the distributed systems are not integrated into a global schema. We suggest a solution to this problem based on the propagation and transformation of data using several XML technologies. Our prototype manages dependencies between the schemas of distributed data sources and allows to define and process arbitrary actions on changed data by manipulating all dependent data sources. The prototype comprises a propagation engine that interprets scripts based on a workflow specification language, a data dependency specification tool, a system administration tool, and a repository that stores all relevant information for these tools.

A SOA-based approach for the integration of a data propagation system

Major challenges that companies face nowadays are extremely volatile markets, a globally distributed supplier network and constantly changing business environments. These circumstances demand a high level of agility and extraordinary flexibility in the business modeling and the organizational structures of a company as well as adaptive and interoperable IT systems. In order to meet these requirements an integration of systems needs to be achieved.

Das Stuttgarter Unternehmensmodell in der Theorie

Unternehmen, die in turbulenten Umfeldern erfolgreich operieren wollen, mussen wandlungsfahig sein. Mit anderen Worten: Sie mussen schnell und gezielt auf sich verandernde, nicht vorhersehbare Marktanforderungen antworten konnen. Die Fuhrungs- und Steuerungsaufgaben von solchen wandlungsfahigen Unternehmen unterscheiden sich grundsatzlich von den Fuhrungs- und Steuerungsaufgaben der Unternehmen in relativ ruhigen Umwelten: Das Management muss fur verschiedene Konstellationen von Unsicherheit sensibilisiert werden, das Denken in Handlungsalternativen muss unterstutzt, Lernprozesse mussen gefordert werden.

Die digitale Modellfabrik

Unter dem Schlagwort der digitalen Fabrik verbirgt sich eine Vielzahl von Ansichten und Definitionen, die sich im Laufe der Zeit entwickelt haben. Fakt ist, dass sich die Fabrikplanung mit immer groseren Anforderungen konfrontiert sieht, da sie auf turbulente Absatzmarkte und abnehmende Produktlebenszyklen zu reagieren hat.

A CONCEPT FOR APPLYING MODEL-DRIVEN ENGINEERING TO APPLICATION INTEGRATION

AbstractModem software for Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) provides tools for modeling integration scenarios. A drawback of these tools is the lack of functionality for exchanging or integrating models from different EAI products. Consequently, developers are only partially able to describe real heterogeneous IT environments. Our goal is to avoid the creation of these so-called ‘integration islands’. For that purpose we present an approach which introduces an abstract view by technology-independent and multivendor-capable modeling for both development and maintenance. With this approach, we propose a toolset- and repository-based refinement of the abstract view to automate implementation with real products and deployment on real platforms.