Dear Michael G Michael U and
Nicola,
I was reading this section on
integration during the call last night, and it did not
ring true to me, but I was struggling to put my finger
on what I thought the problem was:
In this class of applications, the primary
functionality is the matching and mapping of concepts,
while the primary architecture is within a set of
multiple systems. Ontologies are typically used at
runtime by application developers (who are in the best
position to write translators among the systems). (2PQO)
- information
integration Multiple
information resources are combined using ontologies at
runtime to match concepts with similar meaning. (2OM2)
Examples: web service composition, mashups,
information aggregation, data fusion, linked data (2PQP)
- database
integration Queries
that require multiple databases are specified using
common ontologies and data schema are matched using
these ontologies at runtime.
After a troubled night’s
sleep, I think I have a better idea.
In industry, when people talk
about integration, they mean what it takes to turn a
bunch of separate information systems into a single
coherent system of systems. There are typically 4 types
of integration with different characteristics:
1. Core Process Integration: An enterprise will have at least
one and maybe several core processes. These are the
processes the execution of which are the purpose of the
enterprise. In business they are often around the
provision of goods or services to customers. These core
processes are supported by information systems, and
information needs to pass between them in order to
efficiently perform the overall process, integrating the
disparate systems involved. A key part of this will
include Master Data Management so that all the systems
use the same identification for key things like products
and customers.
2. Lifecycle Integration: There will be a number of
things needed to support the core processes, such as
factories and vehicles, each of which has a lifecycle
that needs to be integrated. Particularly with large and
long lived assets like factories and ships, information
needs to be passed between lifecycle stages (e.g. design
to construction, design and construction to operations,
etc) and between the information systems that support
the different processes in those different stages.
3. Supply Chain Integration: When enterprises procure goods in
particular, but also services, they do not just capture
price information, part of the product will be
information about it, and its use. This information
needs to be integrated within the systems that are
involved with the operation and use of those products.
4. Business Intelligence (Performance
Management): To understand how well an
enterprise is performing its processes you need to be
able to analyse the data that arises from the
performance of its processes. This usually involves
collecting and integrating the data from multiple
systems, and populating star or snowflake schemas so
that for example sales can be analysed by customer type,
by product type, by geographic region, by volume, by
value, by profitability etc.
I’m afraid I did not get a any
sense of this from the description above.
The other thing that was
implicit was that data resides in one system and is
queried from there (single source of truth). This is
actually extremely unusual. Much more common is managed
replication, for reasons of both performance and
resilience. Take the business intelligence type of
integration above. The source data is typically in one
or more Transaction Processing systems, where there are
no indices because when you create records, building the
indices are what hits performance. So to perform the
queries, not only do you need to do joins across the
transaction data and the master data, but most queries
will require a table scan. This of course will not only
affect the performance of the query, but the TP system
as well. So a copy of the TP data is made at regular
intervals and it is combined with the Master Data into
massively denormalized tables that have indices on most
columns. Performance is transformed.
There are in fact a variety of
architectures possible for achieving data integration,
which is suitable will depend on the circumstances. This
paper of mine from 1998 outlines some of the possible
approaches.
http://www.matthew-west.org.uk/documents/TheRoleOfEnterpriseModelsInIntegration.PDF
Regards
Matthew
West
Information
Junction
Tel:
+44 1489 880185
Mobile: +44 750 3385279
Skype: dr.matthew.west
matthew.west@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.informationjunction.co.uk/
http://www.matthew-west.org.uk/
This
email originates from Information Junction Ltd.
Registered in England and Wales No. 6632177.
Registered
office: 2 Brookside, Meadow Way, Letchworth Garden City,
Hertfordshire, SG6 3JE.