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W H I T E P A P E R
PolarLake Integration Suite: Technology
Overview
An Introduction to the PolarLake™ Integration
Suite
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PolarLake Integration Suite: Technology Overview White Paper version 1.0 (December 2004) Copyright © 1998 - 2004 PolarLake Limited. All rights reserved. The information contained in this document is confidential and may also be proprietary and trade secret. The information contained in this document is furnished for information purposes only and is subject to change without notice. PolarLake assumes no responsibility or liability for any errors, omissions or inaccuracies that may appear in this document. Without prior written approval from PolarLake, no part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including, but not limited to, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or recording or stored in any retrieval system of whatever nature. Use of any copyright notice does not imply unrestricted public access to any part of this document. PolarLake’s trade names used in this document are trademarks of PolarLake. Other trademarks are the property of their rightful owners.
Contents
Introduction 3
XML & Web Services 4
The Enterprise Service Bus 5
The PolarLake Architecture 6
XML Circuits: XML Centric business processing 7 XML Data Circuits: component assembly based integration 8 XML Process Circuits: process orchestration definition 9
The Dynamic XML Runtime™: An enterprise strength deployment platform 10 The PolarLake Integration Suite 10
Key Issues Addressed by PolarLake 12
Performance and Scalability 12 XML Data Circuit and the Semantic Validation, Transformation & Enrichment of Messages 13 XML Process Circuit and the orchestration of complex business process 15 Intelligent Exception Handling 15 Business Activity Monitoring 16 Rich Document Routing Support 17
Integration with Key Technologies 19
J2EE™ Integration 19 Database Integration 19 Messaging Oriented Middleware Integration 20 Integration with Packaged and Mainframe based Applications 20 Integration with Non-XML formats 20 Deploying and Managing PolarLake Applications 21
Conclusions 23
Appendix A: XML & Web Services: Definition & Use 24
Extensible Markup Language (XML) 24 Web Services 25 Some Business Uses of XML & Web Services 26
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I n t r o d u c t i o n
Traditionally, application or data integration required the use of Enterprise
Application Integration (EAI) products or Application Servers. As a
consequence integration was seen as a lengthy and complex process involving
extensive re-engineering of the business and technology infrastructure.
The advent of XML as a means of data exchange, and web services as the basis
of new application architectures, has changed this perception. The benefits of
using XML and Web Services for this class of project include greatly reduced
development and deployment costs, and an ability to respond much more
quickly to changing business requirements. The size and scale of these benefits
are dramatic, with customers reporting savings of between 25% and 75% on
development times as well as significant reductions of deployment and on-going
maintenance costs.
Furthermore, as all integration is standards-based, organizations may focus
initially on projects delivering maximum return on investment, whilst building
an integration infrastructure that will support future projects. This incremental
integration approach enables ROI to be demonstrated at an early stage and
overcomes the difficulties associated with ‘big bang’ approaches to integration.
Areas in which these technologies can assist the business include:
� Straight Through Processing (STP), which requires multi-
system and multi-enterprise integration, coupled with real-time
decision-making.
� Real Time Risk Management, which requires similar levels of
integration as STP with an additional requirement for real-time
integration and derived decision making.
� Data-centric processing, including inter-bank communications
(relying on the SWIFT system), exchange and processing of
financial instruments (defined in the FpML standards) and
business reporting (defined in XBRL).
� E-Business Integration and B2B Portals, which require
integration of each enterprise’s systems with those of its suppliers
and customers to support the delivery of new products and
services over the Internet.
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� Business Process Integration, which requires integration of
each enterprise’s systems - predominantly within the enterprise.
CRM is a specific instance of this type of system.
PolarLake™, a leader in standards based incremental integration, provides a
complete suite of products for implementing XML and Web Services-based
solutions, including those based on the Enterprise Service Bus architecture.
PolarLake’s products deliver rapid Return on Investment by focusing on solving
high value business problems with a standards based approach capable of
evolving and expanding to address the longer term objectives of the
organization.
PolarLake™ products achieve the following:
� Enable the integration of applications within and between
organizations to automate new and existing business processes.
� Fit easily within the existing investment in enterprise
infrastructure, handling integration with common application
architectures (such as databases and J2EE) as well as common
infrastructure such as messaging systems, system management
platforms and transaction managers.
� Provide a “light footprint”, high performance solution: a growing
requirement given today’s need to deliver projects on time, to
budget and with a tangible and attractive return on investment.
PolarLake has a proven track record in delivering the benefits of incremental
integration, with a technology that leverages existing IT investments in
standards, skills and systems to reduce both initial investment and total cost of
ownership. Deployed customers include leading corporations in financial
services such as Pioneer Investments (Ireland), Man Financial Ltd (UK), and
Nissay Dowa (Japan), leading telecommunications organizations, such as
Midwest Wireless (USA), and government organizations.
X M L & W e b S e r v i c e s
Using XML as a common data format across all systems can significantly reduce
the costs, complexity, project risk and development timescales associated with
integration projects. Building on XML, Web Services allow applications to
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provide software services to other applications in an infrastructure neutral
manner, where the sending and receiving of specific XML documents represent
each service.
For these technologies to be successfully used inside the enterprise, there are
three key requirements:
� Technology integration, with databases, messaging systems,
management systems and application servers
� Business integration, allowing complex business transactions to
be completed and changed with minimum cost and disruption
� Leveraging of existing skills available in the enterprise among
developers, business analysts and system administrators
The Enterpr ise Serv ice Bus
There are a number of architectural approaches being adopted by enterprises
that are moving to XML or Web Services. These range from hub-and-spoke to
bus-based architectures. A prominent example of the latter is the Enterprise
Service Bus (ESB), which provides a distributed, message oriented
architecture, supporting traditional EAI features such as message routing and
transformation, within the context of Web Services and Application Servers.
For organizations adopting the Enterprise Service Bus architecture, PolarLake
provides the full set of features associated with Integration Server products.
PolarLake does not require the adoption of a specific messaging oriented
middleware product. Rather it bridges between multiple protocols, including
multiple messaging products such as IBM’s MQ_series and Tibco’s
ActiveEnterprise
PolarLake can also be used in organizations moving to a Web Services based
architecture. In this instance, PolarLake automates the exposure of existing
applications as Web Services (sometimes called Web Services enablement). As
a fully-featured Integration Suite it addresses the more significant problems
associated with the orchestration of complex business processes across multiple
web services (defined in BPEL4WS), and the integration issues associated with
bridging between different technologies and different service definitions.
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Futhermore, PolarLake can be deployed in a wide range of integration projects
where XML is the desired message format, and complex processes have to be
implemented within constrained budgets and timelines.
T h e P o l a r L a k e A r c h i t e c t u r e
PolarLake makes it straightforward to build and deploy systems that receive,
create, validate, enrich, transform, route and process XML and Web Services.
PolarLake’s products meet the demanding requirements associated with
enterprise integration:
� Technology integration. PolarLake's Dynamic XML Runtime™
provides a highly scalable, high performance runtime server that
integrates with enterprise infrastructure such as queuing systems,
management infrastructure and legacy applications.
� Business integration. PolarLake's XML Circuit™ approach allows
existing developers and business users to rapidly deliver new
solutions with minimum disruption of existing systems and
maximum leveraging of existing assets and skills.
� Leveraging of existing skills. PolarLake tools provide an
intuitive XML- centric environment that supports the software life
cycle. These integrate with and complement familiar tools
environments such as Sun™ ONE Studio, Borland® JBuilder™ for
Java™ or the BMC Patrol® Enterprise Manager Connect SNMP
management system.
Figure 1 PolarLake integrates a wide range of technologies
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XML Circu i ts: XML Centr ic bus iness
process ing
XML Circuits™ enable XML and Web Services based business processes to be
developed, integrated and deployed with greatly reduced effort. These business
processes can be related to specific transactions, such as purchasing a stock, or
can relate to control, such as informing operational risk engines of that stock
purchase.
Each process may require services from many applications. In order to access
each service, there may be a need to reformulate the message, to add or take
away information - in a format appropriate to the destination application. There
may also be auditing and logging requirements, and qualities of service to be
provided such as transactionality or security.
An analysis of the requirements associated with automating business processes
identifies two layers of requirements within the general heading of Business
Processing.
� Integration: the task of translating between information models and
data models - manipulating the documents into the correct formats for
interaction with the existing applications and infrastructure.
� Orchestration: The task of controlling a sequence of calls to the
integration layer, ensuring that all steps that form the business process
are completed, or in case of failure, carry out appropriate recovery
processes.
Reflecting these two categories there are two types of XML Circuit, which
together provide a complete integration and orchestration solution:
� XML Data Circuits: XML Centric, component assembly of the integration
layer
� XML Process Circuits: graphic assembly of business process flows across
multiple XML Circuits, other XML or Web Service based applications, or
legacy applications. XML Process Circuits use the BPEL4WS standard to
define this orchestration.
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Figure 2 PolarLake Designer environment, with XML data circuit
X M L D a t a C i r c u i t s : c o m p o n e n t a s s e m b l y b a s e d i n t e g r a t i o n
XML Data Circuits™ support the creation of solutions that generate, validate,
transform, route and process XML documents. These circuits enable such
solutions to be rapidly developed, integrated and deployed with greatly reduced
effort. Specifically, they address differences in information models between the
incoming document or application data and the required outgoing document or
application data.
Developers can rapidly develop XML Data Circuits within the PolarLake Designer
by simply identifying relevant document sections and assembling components
into circuits to process those segments of XML.
The components placed in the circuit can be existing Java, EJB or COM
components, new Java, XSLT or BeanShell-based components, or PolarLake-
supplied components (such as loggers, routers, filters, forwarders to other
systems, database integration components, and format mappers).
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X M L P r o c e s s C i r c u i t s : p r o c e s s o r c h e s t r a t i o n d e f i n i t i o n
XML Process Circuits support the definition of complex business processes,
potentially spanning multiple XML Data Circuits and other applications. These
include support for long-lived transactions (where a single business process
may last for minutes, days or weeks), logical flow of processing based on the
content of the message, and ability to define exceptions and application-defined
compensating transactions. The XML Process Circuit implements the Business
Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS). Reflecting the wider
applicability of the PolarLake Integration Suite beyond Web Services, the XML
Process Circuits extends this definition to cover non-Web Service based XML
messages.
Each XML Process Circuit can interact with multiple XML Data Circuits, other
XML Process Circuits, and any other XML or Web Service enabled system. The
XML Process Circuit is assembled in a similar manner to XML Data Circuits in
the PolarLake Designer tool. The business process flow, the XML Data Circuits,
other systems invoked and the decision points are all defined within the Circuit.
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The Dynamic XML Runt ime™: An
enterpr ise strength deployment p latform
At the heart of all of PolarLake’s products is an enterprise-grade software server
that hosts and manages the XML Circuits. The PolarLake server has the
following roles:
� It acts as a high-performance, scalable software server supporting
multiple deployment modes, including clusters and fail-over
� It processes large volumes of XML efficiently due to its low-latency
XML-streaming and parallel processing architecture. It is equally
efficient at handling large documents as small ones.
� It provides centralized auditing and distributed management
services, and leverages PolarLake’s Dynamic XML Runtime™ to
enable reconfiguration and upgrades without interruption to
services. It also provides centralized monitoring capabilities,
including both system and business level information monitoring
� It integrates with leading relational databases including Oracle™,
Microsoft’s SQL Server™ and IBM’s DB2® and J2EE™ compatible
Application Servers.
� It integrates with HTTP(S), SMTP, file system (ftp and log file), all
JMS based message systems (including IBM’s WebSphere®,
Tibco™ ActiveEnterprise, SonicXQ™ and SpiritWave®)
� It integrates with enterprise system management platforms, such
as HP Openview and BMC Software PATROL®
The Po larLake Integrat ion Sui te
Built on a common technology base, PolarLake’s products can be used
separately to address point problems or combined to form a complete platform
for enterprise-wide adoption of XML and Web Services. The product set consists
of:
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� The PolarLake Jintegrator, the first Universal ESB, which
provides a complete platform for creating new, or extending
existing, Java and J2EE-based XML and Web Service systems,
while meeting the most demanding performance and reliability
requirements.
� The PolarLake Database Integrator enables XML and Web
Services-based integration of existing database-centric
applications: providing a zero code/zero disruption approach to
the integration of XML and native relational data, as well as other
database assets such as stored procedures.
� The PolarLake Messaging Integrator provides complete
support for XML-based integration, including routing, validation
and transformation and reformatting of messages, across Message
Oriented Middleware and other protocols such as HTTP(S), SMTP
and FTP.
� The PolarLake Process Integrator supports the integration of
the most complex business processes, spanning multiple PolarLake
servers, or other XML or Web Service enabled applications.
� The PolarLake Adapters provide rich interaction between
PolarLake solutions and the most common enterprise applications
such as SAP® R/3®, Siebel, PeopleSoft®, CICS®, IMS, J.D.
Edwards™, Oracle® and more.
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K e y I s s u e s A d d r e s s e d b y
P o l a r L a k e
Per formance and Sca lab i l i ty
PolarLake overcomes the performance issues often associated with processing
XML by employing a number of innovative technologies, typically increasing
throughput by 30-50 times compared with other servers. Some of the key
factors that contribute to this performance boost include:
� XML-streaming: XML documents are processed as each element
arrives, thereby ensuring very low latency. PolarLake is equally
efficient at handling large documents as small ones.
� Multi-threading: multiple sections of the same document (and
multiple documents of multiple types) are processed in parallel.
� Single scan: PolarLake ensures a document is scanned once only
within each PolarLake server.
� Selective processing: frequently an application only requires a
subset of an XML document for its purposes. Within the XML
Circuit™, PolarLake isolates and processes just the subset – often
with dramatic performance results.
The PolarLake architecture requires less hardware to meet the scalability
requirements at each node than alternative approaches that rely on XSLT
scripts or EJB-based approaches. In addition, PolarLake supports clustered
deployment, leveraging capabilities provided by hardware, operating system
and other infrastructure components (e.g. IP clustering and operating system-
provided clustering).
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XML Data C ircu i t and the Semant ic
Va l idat ion, Transformation & Enr ichment
o f Messages
It is easy to create XML that is technically correct and will pass any schema
validation but is nonetheless nonsense from an application perspective.
Similarly, transformation and enrichment need to go beyond simply
recombining or augmenting the XML document. In each case, the business
meaning and context of the XML document needs to be the basis for validation,
transformation or enrichment. This reflects differences in the information
model between the incoming document and the outgoing document and is the
primarily task of the XML Data Circuit.
� Semantic Validation: ensures the XML content makes sense,
both at the level of individual fields and between fields (simple
example: “start date” is earlier than “end date”).
� Semantic Transformation: ensures the data conforms to
internal formats and therefore can be used by internal systems
(this is likely to mean transformation into non-XML formats as well
as between XML formats).
� Semantic Enrichment: ensures the data is complete and is likely
to involve other applications (e.g. databases, Web Services, etc.)
as well as internal calculations (e.g. aggregation, derivation,
analysis, etc.).
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Figure 3 Defining a transformation using the PolarLake Mapper.
All of these are accomplished within the XML Data Circuit, which defines the
way a document is processed based on XPath selection rules and sequences of
components that act on the selected fragments of XML. XSLT or BeanShell may
be used for simple transformations when performance is not an issue. For
more complex transformations, the high performance PolarLake Mapper engine
supports simple, multi-element, contextual and functional transformations, and
includes out-of-the-box functions to handle common problems such as date
format conversions.
The Integration Suite also supports multi-document processing, meaning that a
Data Circuit may involve either many-to-one or one-to-many mapping of XML
documents. In this way more complex integration projects that involve the
combining or splitting of XML documents may be managed within the PolarLake
solution
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XML Process C ircu i t and the orchestrat ion
of complex bus iness process
Many transactions within organizations span multiple applications and may
require minutes, hours or even days to complete. The steps within these
business transactions may include logical decisions, such as forking of the
process, based on the data associated with the transaction. In most cases
complex business processes will span multiple applications (and even
organizations in many cases).
The XML Process Circuit performs the following tasks::
� Coordination of multiple applications based on different
technologies: Ensures that diverse applications can be included
within the business process, whether implemented in Microsoft’s
.Net, using MQ-series for communication, or hosted in another
organization.
� Logical sequences with content-based flow control: Ensures
that applications are called in the right sequence, the correct
messages are sent and that the next step is correct, potentially
based on the information returned from the last step.
� Compensating transactions when process failures occur:
Integrating into the PolarLake exception handling architecture, any
detected failures result in the appropriate corrective action.
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Inte l l igent Except ion Handl ing
The Hurwitz Group has estimated that nearly 80% of time spent in building
business processes is spent in exception management. All of PolarLake’s
products provide a complete and flexible exception handling architecture, within
the definition of the XML Circuit™, that spans both system and application level
exceptions. The exception handling can be used standalone or integrated into
PolarLake’s BAM.
Within XML Process Circuits, the standard BPEL circuit provides the ability to
catch exceptions and to execute compensating transactions, which reverse the
partial completion of the process. These compensating transactions can be
complete business processes or simple alerting messages.
XML Data Circuits provides richer and more configurable exception architecture,
corresponding to their focus on complex integration tasks. An exception can be
raised at any point in the XML Data Circuit and passed to an exception-handling
segment of the circuit. This allows much more fine-grained control of the
exceptions.
Within both XML Process and XML Data Circuits, the compensating transaction
or exception handling sequence has access to the full power of the PolarLake
platform to carry out the required recovery or alerting procedures.
The combination of both types of exceptions handling provides the unique
capability to catch problems occurring within the execution of the business
process or within the data driving the business process.
Business Act iv i ty Monitor ing
As the quantity and complexity of integration within the enterprise increases,
one of the greatest challenges is to track the status and progress of each
business transaction that is occurring. The information gathered can relate to
the technology (such as the number of stalled transactions requiring manual
intervention), or to the business content (such as the total value of orders
currently being processed). BAM holds the promise of allowing optimization to
reduce failure rates and enhance control of the business.
XML and Web Services amplify this issue. More information flows through the
enterprise, and provides a significant opportunity to enhance BAM capabilities
because message formats are typically richer and more easily interpreted.
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Business Activity Monitoring requires three distinct components that are
available with the PolarLake Integration Suite:
� Collection of activity milestones: providing the ability to gather the
raw information that will support the monitoring. XML Circuits gather
events and store them in a milestone database (implemented on any
relational database). Within the XML Process Circuits, such milestones
are automatically stored to ensure correct correlation of messages in
long-lived transactions. Within XML Data Circuits, milestone
components can be added at any point and any arbitrary information
stored.
� Process the activity milestones, filtering events based on
business rules: XML Circuits can be defined that monitor the
milestone Database and act as process and filters, causing alarms to
be triggered.
� Creation and delivery of activity reports: PolarLake allows both a
browser based dashboard approach, which supports dynamic querying
and monitoring, and access to the full power of the XML Circuits to
create and deliver activity reports across multiple supported transports
such as SMTP, HTTP and JMS. In this case, all the processing power
and message delivery capabilities of PolarLake are available.
By adopting a layered BAM architecture, PolarLake allows customers to adopt
the PolarLake approach entirely or to deploy specialist Business Activity
Monitors to process the activity milestones and/or to create and deliver activity
reports.
Rich Document Rout ing Support
The PolarLake architecture supports a number of document routing models
including:
� Simple Message Routing, based on the type of document, on
the origination queue or other defined parameters such as
application defined flags.
� Content-Based Routing, based on the XML content of the
document, with routing decisions made with xQuery or XPath
rules.
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� Publish & Subscribe Based Routing, which allows a list of
destinations (the subscribers) interested in receiving documents
from a sender (the publisher) based on selection criterion (the
topic). If a JMS-based queuing system is used, PolarLake can
integrate with the defined topic mechanism.
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I n t e g r a t i o n w i t h K e y
T e c h n o l o g i e s
J2EE™ Integrat ion
PolarLake is a 100% Java-based system that can be deployed within a J2EE
application server. PolarLake allows Java and J2EE developers to easily
XML-enable and Web Service-enable existing deployed applications without
sacrificing performance, reliability or scalability. Furthermore, a PolarLake
enabled J2EE application can be easily extended to process many different
types of XML document and participate in complex XML-based interactions or
workflows, without changing or disrupting the deployed application.
In addition to being capable of deployment within a J2EE server, PolarLake can
also be deployed as a standalone server running within its own Java Virtual
Machine. It can also be deployed within a servlet engine, such as the popular
open source Tomcat, or within a web server.
Database Integrat ion
Database centric applications are central to most enterprises’ IT infrastructure,
and integrating with them is key to any effective use of XML. PolarLake
provides a complete integration of XML with the leading relational databases
by:
� Automating the storing of XML documents in a database and the
mapping of XML directly into and out of native types in existing
rows and columns. This mapping capability uses the PolarLake
Mapper Engine, enabling the most complex transformation to be
completed within the graphical configuration environment.
� Integrating with the business logic held in databases as stored
procedures, and providing these capabilities within a complete
XML-centric environment.
� Providing the ability to detect changes in the data stored in the
database and generate XML based on those changes.
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� Significantly, PolarLake achieves all of this without changes or
disruption to the deployed database, and without compromising
the database’s performance, reliability or scalability.
Messaging Or iented Midd leware
Integrat ion
Asynchronous messaging oriented middleware (MOM) products deliver better
scalability and adaptability than alternative approaches. Enterprises already
rely on (often several) messaging technologies to reliably route mission critical
information between systems.
PolarLake’s products are integrated with the leading MOM products and are
compatible with the transactions, clustering, and publish/subscribe capabilities
provided by these products. Because PolarLake supports all of these as well as
other protocols such as HTTP(S) and SMTP, PolarLake is ideally suited to the
role of bridging between multiple domains based on different protocols and
messaging systems.
Integrat ion with Packaged and Mainframe
based Appl icat ions
The PolarLake Adapters allow deployed packaged applications from leading
vendors such as Oracle®, PeopleSoft® and Siebel and mainframe applications
based on IMS and CICS, to be seamlessly integrated within PolarLake solutions.
Based on the Java Connector Architecture (JCA) standard, the PolarLake
Adapters expose the standard and custom business processes within these
applications as Web Services or as XML messages. The PolarLake Adapters
allow the full function of the applications to be exposed including support for bi-
direction synchronous and asynchronous communication.
Integrat ion with Non-XML formats
In most integration problems, there will be a mix of XML and non-XML based
formats. While the PolarLake architecture is XML-centric, it is straightforward
to integrate a wide range of non-XML formats. PolarLake does this by first
converting the information into XML and them processing it in the usual
manner. Similarly once processing is complete, PolarLake can output
documents into the required non-XML format.
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The most common non-XML formats are supported as standard capabilities of
PolarLake. These include comma-separated and tab-separated files and
Microsoft Word and Excel. To handle unsupported formats, PolarLake can be
extended with easy to build Java-based components called Request Processors.
These components are customized to handle the formats required and then
deployed into the PolarLake server to automatically convert to and from the
non-XML formats when necessary.
Deploy ing and Managing Po larLake
Appl icat ions
The PolarLake platform can be deployed in a number of configuration types,
including as a stand-alone server, or within a J2EE application server.
Whichever configuration type is chosen, there are two management options:
using the PolarLake Management Console (PMC), or using a SNMP compatible
system such as HP OpenView or BMC Patrol® (shown below). In the latter case,
all the usual features of those systems can be used with PolarLake
deployments.
Figure 4 The BMC Patrol® management console showing a PolarLake
deployment under management, including alarms and load monitors.
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Using the PMC, developers can start and stop applications, view system and
error messages and launch the PolarLake monitor utility to examine application
behaviour in greater detail, either locally or remotely. The PMC also supports
hot swap application and configuration updates, allowing the deployed XML
circuits or any server configurations to be modified or completely changed
without system downtime.
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C o n c l u s i o n s
This white paper has provided an introduction to the technology and products
provided by PolarLake. These products address the real problems faced by an
enterprise attempting to implement XML and Web Services while leveraging
existing applications, infrastructure and staff skills.
The PolarLake product range offers a complete platform for implementing XML
and Web Services-based application integration solutions, including those based
on the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) architecture. They can be used together to
provide a complete enterprise-strength application integration platform, or
separately to solve point integration problems.
For more information on PolarLake, please contact your PolarLake sales
representative or visit:
http://www.polarlake.com/
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Part o f the power o f XML is that i t is readi l y unders tandable
by people as wel l as machines. The s t ruc ture o f an XML
representat ion o f in format ion is h ierarch ica l , cons is t ing of a
ser ies o f e lements , each def ined by a s tar t tag and a match ing
end tag. For example, a famous address can be descr ibed in
XML by:
<?xml vers ion="1.0"?>
<Address>
<Number>1600</Number>
<Street>Pennsylvania Avenue NW </Street>
<Ci ty>Washington, DC</Ci ty>
</Address>
A p p e n d i x A : X M L & W e b
S e r v i c e s : D e f i n i t i o n & U s e
Extens ib le Markup Language (XML)
XML is a markup language that is similar to HTML, the standard markup
language for web pages, and is becoming commonly used to facilitate the
interchange and processing of data between computer systems. Gartner has
predicted that by 2005, XML, which was standardized by the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C) in 1998, will have emerged as the common language of
electronic commerce.
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XML-related standards are being progressed by a number of organizations.
These standards do not provide a complete architecture for encoding financial
information, but rather focus on specific sub-sections of the financial services
industry or particular vertical niches. Each of the organizations is creating
frameworks for defining XML documents in its area of focus, and in some cases
rules for how the documents should be exchanged. The frameworks are
typically described as architectures. These definitions are normally in the form
of XML DTDs or Schemas, which describe the structure and sequence of each
conversation. In most case, the definitions are not Web-Services based,
reflecting the messaging-oriented nature of much financial services interaction.
While some convergence between the standards is likely, it is probable that all
finance organizations will need to support multiple standards within their
systems, and any architecture must be flexible enough to manage the evolution
of these standards. Gartner sums this up well when it predicts that ‘Through
year-end 2005, the majority of large financial services providers will support
multiple XML-based data model standards to connect with their external
stakeholders.’ This requirement to coexist with multiple standards must be
achieved without significant performance, latency or maintenance overhead, all
of which would undermine the typical project goal of real-time response.
Web Serv ices
At its most basic level, a Web Service is a component of business processing
that may involve one or more business systems. The initial Web Services
architecture was B2B focused and this is still reflected in the standards and in
many vendors’ offerings. Web Services provide an XML-based model for
interface driven system interactions, such as previously available in CORBA, or
the EJB model using RMI mechanism. This type of Web Services is sometimes
called RPC or Synchronous Web Services.
There is a second type of interaction model that is common in financial services,
which is data and message centric. This model is typified by data dictionaries
consisting of the set of defined messages and used in systems such as IBM
WebSphere® MQ or TIBCO™ Rendezvous. This style of interaction is much more
common in enterprise systems for reasons of scalability and match to the
underlying business process. Some vendors and analysts are calling this
Messaging or Asynchronous Web Services. At the moment, the majority of
financial services industry organizations mentioned above are not using RPC-
style Web Services as the basis of their frameworks. Some will move to Web
Services over time; others who are more data and message centric will not.
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XML and Web Services based incremental integration
To allow each component in a Web Services-based architecture to be integrated
in a useful way, two additional elements are needed:
� A standard way of sending and receiving the information required
to complete the business processing (XML, with an additional
standardized envelope called SOAP).
� A standard way of publishing descriptions of the conversations
that a Web Service can be involved in. The leading standard is
UDDI, which can provide Web Service Definition Language (WSDL)
as a way of describing actual XML document exchanges within the
conversation. When using Web Services within the enterprise,
UDDI is often not required, as simple documentation of the service
definition is often sufficient.
There has been much work on defining additional often-competing standards to
specify standard enterprise qualities of service and processing requirements
within a Web Services framework. In most cases, it is still unclear which
standard will win customer acceptance and if such a standard is even required.
One exception is the BPEL4WS standard, which is becoming generally accepted
by both users and standards bodies as the best approach to Web Services
orchestration.
Web Services provide a layer of abstraction on top of the implementation of a
business component - the service definition. This definition is not dependent on
any specific infrastructure or middleware. Hence the adoption of Web Services
will remove one of the obstacles to the integration by providing a common
language to describe the interactions.
Some Bus iness Uses of XML & Web
Serv ices
XML is beginning to play a role in a number of financial services industry
initiatives. Web Services will start to contribute to these initiatives, providing
the interface mode of interaction. These include:
� Straight Through Processing (STP), which requires multi-
system and multi-enterprise integration, coupled with real-time
decision making. A significant problem within any STP
environment is the management and synchronization of multiple
data sources representing the same underlying data. A significant
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PolarLake - XML and Web Services based incremental integration
side effect of using XML is that it provides a single representation
of the data and hence a single data format, which reduces the risk
of data error and reduces the processing time.
� Real Time Risk Management, which requires similar levels of
integration as STP with an additional requirement for real-time
integration and derived decision making. Complex transactions,
with disastrous negative consequences if mishandled, must be
managed for risk exposure. As many enterprises are attempting
to reduce costs and risks through automation of financial business
operations, the ability to provide real-time statements of cash and
exposure is becoming a key requirement for Financial Service
Providers (FSPs). As with GSTP, XML can provide the framework
for FSPs within which to integrate systems and support their
customers’ business needs.
� Data-centric processing, including inter-bank communications
(relying on the SWIFT system), exchange and processing of
financial instruments (defined in the FpML standards) and
business reporting (defined in XBRL).
� E-Business Integration and B2B Portals, which require
integration of each enterprise’s systems with those of its suppliers
and customers to support the delivery of new products and
services over the Internet. XML provides the neutral format for
both the internal systems and the external systems. Passing XML
documents around the network significantly reduces integration
and translation effort within each system.
� Business Process Integration, which requires integration of
each enterprise’s systems predominantly within the enterprise.
CRM is a specific instance of this type of system. As with E-
Business integration, XML provides a neutral format for the
participating systems. In addition, it can act as a useful
abstraction of the underlying business process being implemented.
29 of 30 PolarLake | Introduction to PolarLake™ Technology and Products
PolarLake™, a leader in standards based incremental integration, is driving out the costs of
integration. PolarLake provides a complete suite of products for implementing XML and Web
Services-based solutions, including those based on the Enterprise Service Bus architecture.
PolarLake's products deliver rapid Return on Investment by focusing on solving high value business
problems with a standards based approach capable of evolving and expanding to address the longer term objectives of the organization.
PolarLake has a proven track record in delivering the benefits of incremental integration with a
technology that leverages existing IT investments in standards, skills and systems to reduce both
initial investment and total cost of ownership. Deployed customers include leading corporations in
financial services such as Pioneer Investments* (Ireland), Man Financial Ltd (UK), and Nissay Dowa
(Japan), in Government, such as CJIT (Criminal Justice IT, UK), and in telecommunications such as Midwest Wireless (USA) and KDDI (Japan).
PolarLake's solutions are provided by partners such as Hitachi Systems and Services and Sun
Microsystems. PolarLake is a private company, headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, with offices in London, New York and Tokyo.
Leveraging its unique Dynamic XML Runtime™ technology and XML Circuits™ application assembly
framework, PolarLake's products allow customers to deliver solutions at a fraction of the normal time
and cost.
While addressing different requirements, each of PolarLake's products delivers:
Technology integration with PolarLake's Dynamic XML Runtime™, which provides a highly
scalable, high performance runtime server that integrates with enterprise infrastructure such as
queuing systems, management infrastructure and legacy applications.
Business integration with PolarLake's data-centric XML Circuits™ approach, which allows
developers and business users to rapidly deliver new solutions with minimum disruption to existing
systems and maximum leverage of existing assets and skills.
Unique tools that leverage existing skills to provide an intuitive XML-centric environment, and
which support the software life cycle and are based exclusively on open standards.
*Pioneer Investments is a trading name of the Pioneer Global Asset Management S.p.A. group of companies.
Contact Details
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T: +353 (1) 449-1010 T: +81-3-4360-3965 T: +1 (212) 813 2965 T: +44 (0) 20 7618-6426
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