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2007
Book Article
Titel
A systematic approach for the development of integrative business applications
Abstract
Modern business applications consist of many subsystems (or components) potentially developed and maintained from diverse organizations. Generally, there are three different points of view. First, organizations using business applications are interested in unified look-and-feel of composed applications, in a maximum of interoperability and synergetic features among sub-systems, high availability of all subsystems, as well as quick and seamless updates after new releases or bug fixes. Second, organizations providing single subsystems want, on the one hand of course, to satisfy their customers and business partners, but on the other hand, also to minimize their overall effort. Third, organizations integrating single subsystems aim at a uniform and cost-efficient integration architecture. This article takes the two latter viewpoints and describes a methodology for organizations integrating their subsystems with many business applications, all relevant types of subsystems, as well as with the whole family of subsystems from different vendors. The methodology is a product line approach optimally tailored to the needs of such organizations. It views subsystems delivered by a single organization with all corresponding integration contexts and requirements as family of similar systems; and engineers this family by taking systematically advantage of common characteristics and proactively considering differences in anticipated future scenarios. The methodology is based on Fraunhofer PuLSE a customizable product line approach validated in practice by many industry organizations since 1997. The integration methodology has been developed in the German research project UNIVERSYS by tailoring Fraunhofer PuLSE together with industry partners to the integration context described.