Technology Guide: Software
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Related Topics 7 Levels of Application Integration Links |
Contents Application Programming Interfaces (API) Programming languages (for Web Servers) Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) Middleware Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) Glossary Extensible
Markup Language (XML) Distributed
Component Architectures |
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Enterprise PortalsAlso called enterprise knowledge portals, corporate portals or
collaborative portals, they give users one-point access to knowledge and
application resources through the familiar Web browser interface. Enterprise portals promise to bring a
degree of order to the chaotic jumble of Internet information and online
services. Building on the ideas developed in public portals such as America
Online, Netscape Netcenter, and Yahoo, organisations are increasingly
creating enterprise portals to streamline the presentation and delivery of
online resources to employees, suppliers, and customers. Many packed knowledge management applications can serve
enterprise portals. Like the companies that produce them, products have
different features and areas of strength.
Some, concentrating on the vendor’s expertise, provide point solutions
rather than complete portals. Other vendors offer suites of tools from which
companies create custom portals. |
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DatabasesA database can be defined as a collection of information organised in such a way
that it can be retrieved and used. A database management system (DBMS)
can further be defined as the tool that enables us to manage and interact
with the database. Most DBMSs
perform the following functions: ·
Store
data ·
Create
and maintain data structures ·
Allow
concurrent access to many users ·
Enforce
security and privacy ·
Allow
extraction and manipulation of stored data ·
Enable
data entry and data loading ·
Provide
an efficient indexing mechanism for fast extraction of selected data ·
Provide
consistency among different records ·
Protect
stored data from loss by backup and recovery process Several different
types of DBMSs have been developed to support these requirements. These
systems can broadly be classified in the following classes:
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Application ServersAn application server is a set of programs, services and tools
that provide a standard environment programmers use to develop and deploy
business applications on the internet/intranet. Web application servers
provide the infrastructure required for application developers to build
server-side Java components such as servlets, Java Server Pages and
Enterprise Java Beans. By using a web application server, programmers focus
on developing business logic while the web application server takes care of
the technical infrastructure requirements. |
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Application Programming Interfaces (API)An API is an interface between an operating system and its
application programs; it governs both the methods by which the application
programs communicate with the operating system and the services the operating
system makes available to the application programs. An API includes an abstraction layer that hides the complexity
of the underlying routines. Reusable
routines save programmers time and ensure that their applications are
consistent in appearance and operation. Providing interative access to static documents is the most
basic function of a Web server. Web
servers can provide additional functionality by invoking other applications
and returning the results to the user in the form of an HTML page. These server-side applications can be
simple scripts or complex programs and can perform functions that manipulate
data or access information from external sources (e.g. by querying databases
or requesting stock-ticker data from other Web servers). |
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Programming languages (for Web Servers)Web programming languages are the necessary source code to
deliver Web pages to the user. It includes writing a variety of programming
languages such as C, C++, Visual Basic, JavaScript, Java and Perl used to
automate Web pages as well as link them to other applications running in
servers. |
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Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) MiddlewareEAI packaged middleware
is designed to allow developers to choose different levels of integration
(e.g. data level, application interface-level, or business process-level)
between existing and new systems. As a result, many older systems that still
perform valuable tasks are able to continue.
Often the return on an EAI investment is measured by how little or the
installed base needs to be changed to leverage a new system. Another driver behind EAI deployment involves sharing information
between disparate applications that were never designed to work together.
Business process automation is the automation of tasks that an organisation
already might be doing manually by integrating two or more applications. E.g. a business can print a sales report
from an EPR system to cross-reference customer information for credit checks
in another system. EAI would
transform this task from a manual process to an automated one. Click here for details of the 7 levels of
Application Integration. Connectors (also known as adapters) are the interfaces to the application packages supplied by the EAI vendor. Each application needs a connector, and all connectors must be upgraded when the set of requests that can be handled changes. EAI vendors supply two basic types of connectors: those that interface with commercial applications, such as SAP R/3, and those that interface with commercial systems software, such as the Oracle Database Management System (DBMS). Vendors usually supply an SDK so that users can build connectors to systems that are not supported by the vendor directly, e.g., a mainframe Cobol application that was developed in-house. Several advanced EAI products employ an event-driven publish-and-subscribe model for communicating information. Publish-and-subscribe is a method of communication between applications by which one application subscribes to information that is published by another application. Over the past few years, EAI middleware has been considered synonymous with event-driven, peer-to-peer application architectures. Momentum has changed to the composite application approach, because business-to-business cost reduction has become paramount. EAI, as an industry, has transformed itself into e-business, applying message-based integration techniques across organisational boundaries and turning attention to the development of new business logic for processes that trading partners often share. |
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XML MiddlewareThe value of using XML as a middleware is that XML parsers can be
written in any language and the data XML comprises is all ASCII (American
Standard Code for Information Interchange), so it is supported by any
platform, easily transmitted through firewalls, and hierarchical. In a sense, an XML document is like an
object, in that XML parsers and schemas define tags that may contain some
object data. Unlike the three major
component models, XML does not provide the complete set of characteristics
that are typically associated with object-oriented languages, but its
underlying technology is based on concepts that are analogous to
object-oriented concepts. The XML specification, by itself, does not provide all the
middleware elements needed by users.
At the moment there are several efforts under way to establish
XML-related middleware elements. The
key elements are a mechanism for routing XML documents between users and a
repository or registry to keep track of the locations of users. In addition, a variety of services that
support things like transaction processing and security will be needed. SOAP is an XML schema that defines certain
tags that create an envelope around other XML data. This envelope, along with the appropriate XML parsers and
programs, can facilitate a transport protocol, allowing two systems to
communicate without having to know much about each other. |
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Storage Management Solution The volume of data that needs
to be stored is doubling almost every year. Industry analysts estimate the
total cost of storage ownership to be three to seven times the cost of disk
space, which represents more than 50 percent of all IT budgets today. Organisations’ ability to
compete and succeed relies on data-fed, data-driven and data-intensive
applications. To assure that these business-critical applications are
continuously available and performing, organisations need a simple,
cost-effective storage management solution. Vendors typically offer
centralised storage management solutions, leveraging on partnerships with
other industry leaders in the ACSM Consortium, that can help to: Simplify storage management ·
Centralise management ·
Manage enterprise storage diversity ·
Identify and resolve resource conflicts Reduce the cost of ownership ·
Identify and eliminate wasted disk space ·
Increase productivity ·
Avoid system downtime Assure storage device and
application performance ·
Develop an application-centric view ·
Shorten problem resolution time ·
Improve present and future performance Click here for more on storage. |
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Messaging and CollaborationMessaging & Collaboration involve applications that enable
groups of users to work together by sharing information and
processes--including email, group calendaring and scheduling,
shared folders/databases, threaded discussions, and custom
application development. Some of the most exciting recent developments in
these technologies are instant and unified messaging, Web-based tools for
team collaboration, and real-time data conferencing. Applications for Messaging & Collaboration focus on these areas: Email/Calendaring & scheduling consolidates email, calendar
functions, address book, and team scheduling in one consistent application,
avoiding the need for separate application functions. Particularly useful
with the proliferation of Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and wireless
communications. Collaborative applications track information (ISO9000
projects, legal cases, FDA approval processes, etc.), disseminate information
(corporate policy documents, HR procedures, tips and techniques, etc.), and
share ideas (discussion forums, etc.). Collaborative commerce includes people in the process
workflow, supporting the unstructured and human element of the business
transaction. Knowledge management, the next wave of applications
to manage and leverage intellectual capital--the new currency of business.
Involves creating, storing and collaboratively sharing employee information. Realtime collaboration provides users with instant
messaging, online meetings, and application sharing. Unified communications (mobile & wireless) can help users stay
in touch anytime, anywhere, by extending collaborative capabilities to small
Web-enabled devices, including cell phones, pagers and PDAs. Distance Learning helps organisations give their employees access to
training at flexible times, across time zones and geographic borders,
extending organizational effectiveness. While the Internet wired the world, companies were wired piece
by piece. Different vendors, different e-mail systems, different platforms
and different protocols: the legacy of this piecemeal approach? Islands of
knowledge and information that now hamper many companies' competitiveness. But the need to communicate across technical boundaries has
created a new generation of messaging infrastructures. Robust and
intelligent, these systems not only connect disparate email and messaging
systems, they redefine traditional business communities. With messaging technologies, organisations are creating new
types of internal teams, and forging supply chains and value chains that span
multiple organisations. |
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Firewalls and VPN All firewalls act as a perimeter access-control device. They let some people into a network of computer systems, and they keep some people out. Firewalls enforce a set of rules that determine which information is allowed to pass. There are two basic types of firewalls: packet-filters and proxy servers. Some other sources define more categories, but these are the basic two. Many commercial firewall products are hybrids of these two types. A packet-filter firewall does just what the name implies. It blocks access through the firewall to any packets, which try to access ports which have been declared "off-limits." Some versions allow you to specify that only packets from specific IP address can pass particular ports. Others allow for all except specific IP addresses. But regardless of the method, they all are trying to block access based on some set of rules. The proxy server (also known as "application gateway") type of firewall attempts to hide the configuration of the network behind the firewall by acting on behalf of that network, or as a "proxy." All requests for access are translated at the firewall so that all packets are sent to and from the firewall, rather than from the hosts behind the firewall. These firewalls also allow for various access control rules to be enforced. The major difference between these and packet filters, is that packet filters operate on individual packets, whereas the proxy servers must be aware of the entire session. You will also hear the term "stateful inspection" with regard to firewalls. What this feature does is have the firewall remember what outgoing requests have been sent and only allow responses to those requests back through the firewall. This way, attempts to access the internal network that have not been requested by the internal network will be denied. Either type of firewall can use stateful inspection. There are highly flexible and configurable firewalls (like those from Check Point Software) that operate on dedicated computer systems. These are generally used by organizations with the need to specifically configure the firewalls for their own purposes -- and the resources to do so. At the other end of the spectrum are firewalls that come as part of an appliance or some other system, like those from Sonicwall Inc. or Linksys Group Inc., and that have limited configurability. These are generally made to drop into the home and SOHO environments. Then you have everything in between, depending on what is needed. Cisco, for instance, builds its firewall into routers and VPNs. A virtual private network (VPN) is a private data network that makes
use of the public telecommunication infrastructure, maintaining privacy
through the use of a tunneling protocol and security procedures. A virtual
private network can be contrasted with a system of owned or leased lines that
can only be used by one company. The idea of the VPN is to give the company
the same capabilities at much lower cost by using the shared public
infrastructure rather than a private one. Phone companies have provided
secure shared resources for voice messages. A virtual private network makes
it possible to have the same secure sharing of public resources for data.
Companies today are looking at using a private virtual network for both
extranets and wide-area intranets. Using a virtual private network involves encrypting data before sending it through the public network and decrypting it at the receiving end. An additional level of security involves encrypting not only the data but also the originating and receiving network addresses. Microsoft, 3Com, and several other companies have developed the Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) and Microsoft has extended Windows NT to support it. VPN software is typically installed as part of a company's firewall server. |
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Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS)Intrusion detection quickly alerts network managers to
intrusion-detection problems so that the network managers can invoke planned
responses. Intrusion detection helps a network manager determine whether an
unusual traffic pattern is actually an attack or simply a random event that
is occurring for non-malicious reasons. Intrusion detection can be useful in
detecting such security policy violations (intentional or unintentional) as
simple password violations or inappropriate services. Network managers use
intrusion detection systems (IDS) to detect when malicious users are using
the company's site to launch attacks against other sites. Intrusion detection systems (IDS) focus on:
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Glossary |
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MiddlewareMiddleware comprises 2 general subsets: the application server
or component environment, and messaging.
Middleware is any system or collection of utilities that links
different elements together, whether on a single machine or over a network. In the world of networked computing, middleware must link a
variety of platforms from an unknown number of locations. The middleware that keeps track of the
locations of the software modules that need to link to each other and that
manages the actual exchange of information is rapidly increasing in
sophistication. In short, middleware
is being used to solve the two distinct problems of heterogeneity and
resource discovery. Types of middleware include: ·
Remote Procedure Call Middleware ·
Message-Oriented Middleware ·
Transaction Processing Middleware ·
Object and Component Middleware ·
Enterprise Application Integration Middleware ·
Distributed Component Middleware · XML Middleware |
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Extensible Markup Language (XML)Extensible Markup Language enables the use of richly structure
documents on the Web. It was created,
in part, to overcome the limitations of HTML’s restricted tag set and
semantics and the pre-Web SGML, which was intended for large, sophisticated
document management systems and therefore impractical for most Web use. Because XML is an application (a subset,
or restricted form) of SGML, SGML systems can read XML documents. SGML handles certain applications, such as
the tagging and archiving of sophisticated documents, better than XML. XML is not a single, predefined , or fixed, markup language; it
enables developers to define customised markup languages for describing
information in a variety of document types, including the Web. In XML, customised tags (corresponding to
particular DTDs) can be created for the definition, transmission, validation,
and interpretation of data between applications and organisations. The meaning of the tags must be agreed
upon by the parties exchanging data. |
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Extensible HTML (XHTML)ost. Pg 650 |
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WML/HDMLost. Pg 648 |
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SGMLost. Pg 649 |
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SOAPThe Single Object Application Protocol (SOAP) is a lightweight, XML-based
protocol for information exchange in a decentralised, distributed
environment. It consists of 3
segments: ·
an envelope defining a framework for describing a message’s
content and how to process it; ·
a set of encoding rules for expressing instances of
application-defined data types; and · a convention for representing responses and remote procedure calls. The original SOAP specification was drafted in May 1998 by Dave Winer of UserLand Software. In August 2000, IBM joined Micorsoft, DevelopMentor, UserLand, and a number fo additional partners, including Ariba, Commerce One, Compaq, Iona, Intel, Lotus, ObjectSpace, and Rogue Wave, in proposing SOAP to the World Wide Web consortium as a candidate XML middleware transport standard. Microsoft has used SOAP in its new BizTalk framework, and IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and Sun have incorporated SOAP into their Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration registry standard. |
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ComponentA component is a group of related functions encapsulated with
data into an object that can be called by a running program to perform a
specific task. The calling program
can be on the same machine, on a different machine within the enterprise, or
at a completely different site connected to the calling program across the
internet. Components found across the
enterprise can be CORBA
components, Java-Beans, or ActiveX components. The four most common reasons for using software components and distributed objects are code reuse, assembly of new business applications, support for heterogeneous computing infrastructures, and ability of an application to scale. Types of components: ·
Graphical User Interface Components ·
Utility Components ·
Business Components |
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Component ModelsComponent models define a specific type of component and the
environment in which it must execute.
All actual components are instances of one of the specific component
models. Throughout the late 1990’s, there were three popular commercial
component models; Microsoft’s COM, CORBA, and JavaBeans. Initially, COM and JavaBeans were
primarily designed to handle GUI development for client applications, and the
OMG’s CORBA was designed to perform utility function (allowing objects on different
platforms to communicate). In the late 1990’s, as companies embraced the Internet and
multi-tiered architectures, developers found that it took a lot of work to
extend a basic component model like COM or JavaBeans (both designed to handle
simple client applications) to handle the more complex problems associated
with server-based applications.
Server components, e.g. were often called to function within
transaction processing systems, or to support load balancing that required
multiple instances of the same component to run on different servers
simultaneously. To make server-side
development easier, the supporters of each of the major basic component
models extended their models to create advanced of server-side component
models. Microsoft’s COM was extended
with MTS, then COM+; JavaBeans was
extended to EJB (Enterprise JavaBeans); and CORBA created the CCM. Microsoft has announced that its new .NET
environment will gradually replace it COM component model and its DNA
environment. |
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Distributed Component ArchitecturesSoftware architectures describe the basic elements and
relationships used in software development.
Companies that embrace distributed component middleware are adopting a
component architecture. In such a
case, the key elements in the business environment are described in terms of
components, and a middleware infrastructure is included to facilitate
communication between the components. The following are the 3 popular component architectures: ·
OMG’s (Object
Management Group) CORBA
architecture – provides middleware infrastructure and component models,
extensive suite of services and utilities and collection of domain component
framework specifications. ·
Microsoft’s Distributed
Internet Architecture (DNA) – the COM component model, coupled with the
services, utilities, and middleware infrastructure needed to support its use. ·
Sun’s J2EE
architecture – comprises the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), a large collection
of Java language and component frameworks, and several utilities. The less widely used component models or architectures include Computer Associates’ Unified Component Model (UCM) and Oracle’s Network Computing Architecture (NCA). |
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CORBACommon Object Request Broker Architecture represents the most
ambitious middleware standardisation project undertaken by the computer industry
so far. The OMG develops the Object
Management Architecture (OMA) that provides CORBAservices, CORBAfacilities,
and CORBAdomains. The CORBA core
includes standardised network communication protocols, interface mappings for
various languages, interoperability, interface and implementation
repositories, and calling conventions implemented by a CORBA ORB. CORBA 3.0, which includes the CCM
specification, was released in early 2000.
CORBAcomponents aims to generalise the EJB model and ensure EJB
capability. Using the standard protocol IIOP, a CORBA-based program from any
vendor, on almost any computer, operating system, programming language, and
network, can interoperate with a CORBA-based program from the same of another
vendor, on almost any other computer, operating system, programming language,
and network. CORBA can be integrated ranging from mainframes through minis
and desktops to handhelds and embedded systems. It is useful in servers that must handle large number of
clients, at high hit rates, with high reliability. |
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OLEOLE is a compound document standard developed by Microsoft. With OLE, a developer can create objects
with one application, then link or embed them in a second application; the
embedded objects retain their original format as well as their links to the
application that create them. |
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Java Virtual Machine (JVM)The software that supplies the system-independent interfaces for
Java software (including the Java Runtime Environment). Use this term
to refer to the actual Java Virtual Machine and not the Java Runtime
Environment. |
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Java Runtime EnvironmentSupplies the runtime environment for Java software. Runs on top
of a Java Virtual
Machine (JVM). Unless otherwise specified, this term applies
to a generic Java execution environment provided by a browser, Web server, or
other context--not the specific JRE product from Sun. |
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SAMLThe Security Assertions Markup Language (SAML) is an XML-based
framework for web services that enables the exchange of authentication and
authorisation information among business partners. SAML scenarios include Single Sign-on (users logged into one
content provider’s website are able to access content at other “federated”
websites by relaying security assertions), Distributed transactions (a
corporate buyer can buy from a supplier’s e-commerce site once he relays
authorisation and spending limit assertions from a trusted authority),
Authorisation service (the buyer may access the supplier site, which directly
requests security assertions from the authority before completing the
transaction). |
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Updated on December 23, 2002
© Copyright 2002 Allan Low. All rights reserved. Reproduction of this Web Site, in whole or in part, in any form or medium without express written permission from the author is prohibited.