Lesson 5 — Architecture Family
Chapter 8 names several related architecture concepts. They are not interchangeable.
EAI — Enterprise Application Integration
Applications/modules interact through defined interfaces/APIs instead of one application directly reaching into another application’s internal store.
Clue: controlled application-to-application interaction through defined interfaces.
ESB — Enterprise Service Bus
A message-oriented intermediary that routes, mediates and can transform messages among heterogeneous systems. Commonly associated with near-real-time, asynchronous, loosely coupled exchange.
Clue: the bus/intermediary that moves messages.
SOA — Service-Oriented Architecture
An architecture of independent reusable services with well-defined contracts/interfaces. The caller does not need to know the service’s internal implementation.
Clue: reusable black-box capability with a defined interface.
An API can expose a SOA service, but API ≠ SOA.
CEP — Complex Event Processing
CEP combines/interprets multiple events or streams to recognize a meaningful condition and trigger action.
One event merely being transported is not necessarily CEP. A pattern such as multiple failed logins plus a high-value transaction from a new location is closer to CEP because several events/context are interpreted together.
Clue: event pattern → inferred condition → automated response.
Federation and Data Virtualization
Federation accesses a combination of disparate stores.
Data Virtualization presents heterogeneous distributed sources as one logical database/view without necessarily physically consolidating them.
The data remains distributed, so source performance, availability, security, semantic consistency and change still matter.
DaaS — Data as a Service
Data is made available on demand as a governed service, internally or externally. DaaS still requires definitions, access rules, quality, Metadata, lineage and service levels.
Do not confuse Data as a Service with Database-as-a-Service infrastructure.
Cloud integration / iPaaS
Cloud-delivered integration capability spanning SaaS, cloud, on-premises and B2B contexts. Platform choice does not remove the management questions about meaning, mapping, lineage, latency and governance.
Physical consolidation vs virtual access
A warehouse/hub may persist integrated data. Federation/virtualization can provide unified access without moving everything into a common store. The correct choice depends on history, performance, source availability, persistence and service requirements.
Source: pp. 268–273.