As the need for "right-time" information becomes more prevalent, organizations are looking to new information delivery methods such as Enterprise Information Integration (EII). It's more than a distributed query, but where do vendors over-promise and under-deliver? This presentation will explain EII, how it's different from other integration technologies, and the underlying mechanisms. The goal is to outline areas where EII is a good fit and areas where other tools may be more appropriate.

1. Enterprise Information Integration Technology: Architectures, Uses and Abuses Mark Madsen http://ThirdNature.net [email_address]

6. EDR: Enterprise Data Replication EDR Server Order Entry CRM Fulfillment Inventory EDR EDR

7. ETL: Extract, Transform and Load ETL Engine The good points Connectivity Transformation Read-write access Metadata The bad points Requires a physical target Latency Distributed query limitations Complexity Database Targets Databases Documents Flat Files XML Services ERP Applications Source Environments

9. EII: Enterprise Information Integration EII Server Databases Documents Flat Files XML Services ERP Applications Source Environments SQL SOAP WS-* REST File Virtual Models Consuming Environments Databases Dashboards OLAP Productivity BAM/BPM Reporting ETL ERP Applications

10. EII Architecture: Process-based EII View APIs xform Publish an ETL process as a service – the output of the process is the “view” Approach some ETL vendors have for on-demand access Back-to-front model Applications Databases XML/Services

11. EII Architecture: Model-based View is defined as a model over sources Most EII products work this way Front-to-back model Applications Databases XML/Services EII View APIs

12. How EII Works 1. User’s client sends a request which goes to the EII server interface Applications Databases XML/Services EII Server EII View SQL

13. How EII Works 2. The EII server parses the request and creates query fragments to send to the sources Applications Databases XML/Services EII Server EII View SQL

14. How EII Works 3. Each source system receives its query fragment, processes it and returns the result Applications Databases XML/Services EII Server SQL

15. How EII Works 4. EII server assembles the final result (which may mean additional processing) and the result is sent back to the client Applications Databases XML/Services EII Server EII View SQL

21. Adding On-demand BI Capabilities Source Environments Data Warehouse ETL Historical data Current data ODS BI Applications

22. Drill-through to Source Detail Source Environments Data Warehouse ETL Drill-through accesses detail data via virtual tables in the warehouse ODS BI Applications

23. Consolidated Views Data Mart Source Environments ODS ETL Data Mart EII Server ETL Data is available via the EII server, providing a virtual consolidation mart BI Applications

24. Performance Management and BI Source Environments EII Server ETL Data Warehouse BI Applications ODS Dashboards BPM BAM Operational Reporting

28. Portals, Composite Applications and SOA Data Services (EII) Transaction Services (EAI) Databases Documents Flat Files XML Services ERP Applications Source Environments

30. Just Remember It’s a Prototype

31. Going Further: the Virtual Data Warehouse