NonStop Systems Introduction

Introduction
NonStop Systems Introduction—527825-001
1-9
The ZLE Architecture
through multiple screens and processes to obtain the required information. A ZLE
system integrates these systems, so that the customer representative can obtain the
necessary information through a single interface.
The enterprise application integration (EAI) environment includes all the services
that enable the business applications running on the operational systems to
communicate with each other and with the data store. It is in this layer that a request is
received and evaluated, business intelligence is applied to the request, and the
response is formulated and sent to the user, and, if necessary, new information is
pushed out to other operational systems.
For example, if a customer address changes in a particular business application, the
change is routed to the ZLE hub; the EAI software components on the hub then route
the change to all the other business applications that need to know about the change.
All communications between the operational systems passes through the EAI
environment.
The EAI components may be hosted on the NonStop server or on a separate and
entirely different platform (such as Windows or Sun) called an integration server, which
communicates with the NonStop server through standard messaging products. The
EAI software is generally provided by third-party vendors.
Services provided by EAI include:
•
Data conversion. A major challenge of a ZLE system is that of handling the data
conversion tasks needed to enable all of a corporation’s diverse business systems
to communicate with the ZLE hub. As shown in Figure 1-3 on page 1-7, this role is
fulfilled by programs called adapters. Adapters are programs that translate data
and transaction requests from the native format of the sending application to the
format required by the ZLE hub and vice versa, thus enabling the operational
systems to communicate with the applications and services residing on the hub.
For example, suppose a local business runs its operations on a Tuxedo platform
and wants to be integrated into a ZLE system that uses a platform based on Java.
The business would use a Tuxedo adapter to convert Tuxedo calls to Java calls,
thus enabling the Tuxedo applications to interface to the Java framework.
It should be noted, however, that although adapters can be used to connect the
various business applications to a platform of a different base, the greatest benefit
of a platform is provided to applications written using that platform’s API (for
example, applications based on Tuxedo work best in a NonStop Tuxedo integration
platform).
Adapters are hosted on the operational systems, not on the NonStop server, and
are usually supplied by third-party vendors.
•
Data transformation. Different applications often represent data items in different
ways. For example, an application might represent dates using the day/month/year
format, while another application might use the month/day/year format. Data
transformation services perform the necessary translation.