6.6. Conclusion

This chapter examined some of the key issues for enterprise application integration. It began by illustrating typical integration problems encountered by enterprises, and then described the various integration technologies available with the J2EE 1.4 platform. These J2EE technologies are not limited to Web services only, though Web services represent one valid integration approach most useful in certain situations. In addition to Web services, the J2EE platform has technologies for integrating with relational databases and other types of data stores, messaging technologies, and EIS access technologies.

The chapter described the major J2EE application integration approaches—including using Web services, enterprise beans and JMS, connectors, and data access objects—and detailed the situations when it was most appropriate to use these different approaches. It also showed how the various approaches could be combined.

The chapter concluded with a set of guidelines for achieving data, application, and business process integration. It also presented some guidelines for integrating home-grown systems, along with how to leverage the capabilities of registries for integration purposes.

Chapter 7 discusses the approaches for implementing secure Web services.