9
AUGUST,
2004
Balls,
boats and SOA
There may, at first, seem to be little connection between
balls, boats and service oriented architectures but the connection is a
US company, Brunswick Corp., that makes bowling balls and boats amongst
other things. The nature of the connection is an object lesson for other
user companies, for it has a development division, Brunswick New Technologies,
that has been working on IT solutions to the problems the company faces,
one of which is loosely coupling the outputs of various applications.
This is a classic SOA problem and the company has come up with a solution,
Redberri 6.0. Though new to the outside world, it has undergone a lengthy
development cycle, hence the 6.0 naming, and is a piece of middleware that
connects with legacy systems and converts data from one format to another
for better communication along the supply chain. It takes incoming data
from outside applications and converts it to the native format of recipient
applications in a company's internal systems, ready for processing. Responses
and other required outgoing actions are then translated back into the native
format of the external applications, for use in those systems. The result
is a loose coupling of information that the company claims follows a service-oriented
model.
It has a GUI, known as Map Builder, that enables users to depict relationships
between external and internal systems and 'simple connectors' enable users
to map the relationship between applications in a business sense. In other
words, in terms of their purchase order software mapping onto a partner's
purchase order processing system. Once the mappings are complete, Redberri
generates the code to perform the depicted task.
Redberri 6.0 also comes with its own source code, enabling users to make
changes to the basic product for added functionality. Itself a componentized
offering, users also have the ability to license specific components or
functionality separately or as a combined unit, rather than taking on the
whole platform.
www.redberri.com
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