Integrating Applications with OpenEAI and ConnectMAX Steve Wheat, Senior Technology Architect, Open

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Integrating Applications withOpenEAI and
ConnectMAXSteve Wheat, Senior Technology
Architect, Open Integration, Inc.

• Helping Educators Deliver
• Excellence Through Innovation

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What we will cover

• What is OpenEAI?
• What is ConnectMAX?
• How to Learn More
• Demonstration

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What is OpenEAI?

• A methodology for analyzing and defining
  integrations
• A message protocol using an XML format that
  provides the specification for enterprise
  messages, as well as the expected, general
  behavior for applications that process these
  messages.
• A suite of standards-based foundational APIs that
  provide the building blocks for integrations
• An open source project with six departments that
  focus on documenting OpenEAI technology and
  concepts and as well as providing example
  implementations and production-quality reference
  implementations

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What OpenEAI is NOT

• A set of standard message definitions
• A product

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OpenEAI Departments

• Methodology
• Message Object API
• Application Foundation APIs
• Message Definitions
• Reference Implementations
• Deployment and Administration

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How OpenEAI came to be

• Organizational nature of the University of
  Illinois
• Large, decentralized organization with three
  campuses 66,000 students 20,000 employees 964
  departments annual operating budget of 3
  billion
• Four different departments dedicated solely to IT
  at the campus and University administration
  levels and hundreds of active IT groups in the
  University departments
• Many heterogeneous platforms
• Many disparate systems approximately 130
  enterprise-wide systems hundreds of
  campus-specific academic and administrative
  systems thousands of academic and administrative
  systems in University departments
• Business process improvement and cost/risk
  avoidance
• ERP implementation provided an opportunity to
  rebuild technology and integration infrastructure
• Emphasized dramatic nature of shift from
  proprietary point-to-point interfaces to
  standards-based messaging

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How OpenEAI came to be

• Why build?
• Cost savings vs. proprietary approach
• Proprietary everything! Terminology, tools
  languages
• Much of the same work had to be done even with a
  proprietary solution.
• UI is a large organization and couldnt ask all
  departments to purchase very expensive licenses
  and maintain complex integration brokers
  themselves
• Intellectual savings. By developing software and
  methodologies based on standards, University
  staff can concentrate on a set of core concepts
  supported by more than just one company.

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How OpenEAI came to be

• Why and how did it turn into an Open Source
  initiative?
• After discussing what the University had done
  with its business partners and other interested
  parties, these partners expressed interest in
  using it. An Open Source initiative was the
  logical way to make this happen
• By making OpenEAI available to the world, we can
  leverage input from people way smarter than they
  are and continuously make OpenEAI better
• Ultimately, negotiated an agreement with
  University of Illinois that led to the
  intellectual property being gifted to the OpenEAI
  Software Foundation. This provides the structure
  to maintain and support the body of work and
  makes it possible to grow these concepts and
  technologies as time goes by and more people use
  them

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Selected Use Cases

• University of Illinois
• SunGard Higher Education
• University of New Mexico
• Open Integration Incorporated
• MAXIMUS
• LA Unified School District

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University of Illinois

• 50 messaging applications, growing (and retiring
  weekly)
• New Java applications, legacy mainframe
  applications, PowerBuilder client/server
  applications, ColdFusion applications
• Every Java application (messaging or not) is
  OpenEAI based for uniform configuration and
  deployment
• Higher-level enterprise foundation built on
  OpenEAI (authentication, authorization, session
  management and directory services)

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SunGard Higher Education

• The SunGard Luminis Data Integration Suite, a
  collection of products based on OpenEAI
• The Luminis Data Integration for e-Procurement,
  implemented initially at the University of New
  Mexico (local Banner Finance with hosted SciQuest
  HigherMarkets)
• e-Procurement messages 4 pub/sub and 4
  request/reply
• SunGard will use OpenEAI as its native data
  messaging protocol for Banner, the most used ERP
  system in higher education
• SunGard is developing addition messages and
  working with other vendors using the Luminis Data
  Integration Suite based on OpenEAI

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Open Integration Incorporated

• Provides OpenEAI implementation and development
  services
• OpenII Toolkit for OpenEAI a suite of tools for
  developing and administering OpenEAI-based
  integrations and services
• Delivers hosted services for client who desire
  low-latency OpenEAI-based integrations and web
  services, but who do not wish to run and
  administer them

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MAXIMUS

• ConnectMAX a full-featured enterprise service
  bus for developing and administering OpenEAI
  integrations and web services
• General connectors for plugging common classes of
  technology into ConnectMAX flat files,
  relational database management systems, web
  services, and directory services (LDAP)
• Application-specific connectors for integration
  other student systems and business applications
  with ConnectMAX SAP, Welligent, CenterTrack,
  Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF), and
  more to follow
• OpenEAI and ConnectMAX implementation services
  and training

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LA Unified School District

• SchoolMAX Enterprise
• Welligent
• Language Assessment System (LAS)
• Basic Inventory of Native Language (BINL)
• Standardized Student Testing (SST)
• ERP (SAP)
• Early Education SIS (CenterTrack)
• Elementary SIS
• Adult Education SIS (KnowledgeCore)

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Benefits of OpenEAI

• Methodology
• Provides an analysis template and analysis
  process for analyzing and documenting the
  requirements of integrations, defining enterprise
  data objects, and specifying enterprise messages
  without requiring or referencing specific
  products
• The analysis process ties directly into the
  implementation process in other words, the XML
  and other artifacts produced by following the
  analysis template are actually used to generate
  and write code that implements integrations and
  documents their finished state.
• NOTE See the OpenEAI Methodology Document
• http//www.openeai.org/site/public.live?documentD
  ocumentation.xml

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Benefits of OpenEAI

• Protocol
• Provides a detailed structure for messages in XML
  format
• Defines the message actions that can be performed
  on enterprise data objects through messaging
• Prescribes general behavior that applications
  must adhere to for each message action in order
  to build reliable integrations and maintain
  enterprise data integrity
• Provides the format for specifying and talking
  about enterprise data objects contained within
  the messages
• NOTE See the OpenEAI Protocol Document
• http//www.openeai.org/site/public.live?documentD
  ocumentation.xml

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Benefits of OpenEAI

• Foundational APIs
• Provides a set of tools that can be used to
  implement defined integrations consistently and
  reliably
• Not required, but makes much of what has to be
  implemented much easier to implement
• Key foundation components
• Gateway pattern
• Application foundation
• Message objects
• JMS foundation objects

NOTE See the OpenEAI Protocol Document http//www
.openeai.org/site/public.live?documentDocumentati
on.xml
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OpenEAI Sample Enterprise (1)

• Allows people to download and run OpenEAI based
  applications in an integrated sample enterprise.
  This gives them the opportunity to see how the
  pieces fit together
• Uses several OpenEAI reference implementations
• Several applications and gateways developed
  strictly for the sample enterprise
• Developed using all Open Source software
• MySQL
• OpenJMS
• Will evolve into a full treatment of all OpenEAI
  concepts with concrete examples

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OpenEAI Sample Enterprise (2)

• Purpose
• To provide an area where we can test changes to
  core foundation
• To provide an area where we can demonstrate the
  incorporation of OpenEAI components and
  strategies with other areas of development and
  technologies
• To provide a downloadable archive that anyone can
  download and use to learn more about OpenEAI,
  with hands on examples and artifacts that allow
  people to make changes and see their implications
  in a real enterprise

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OpenEAI Sample Enterprise (3)

• History
• Initially released in March of 2003
• Included the following components
• AevGateway example gateway
• EnterpriseRequestProxy reference implementation
• EnterpriseRouter reference implementation
• EnterpriseWarehouse example gateway
• SelfService example application (Swing)
• Test Suite application used to ensure a gateway
  follows the OpenEAI protocol (handles the
  appropriate requests, publishes the appropriate
  sync messages etc.)
• Message Object API Generation application used to
  generate the Java business objects from the
  methodology byproducts (DTD/XML)

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OpenEAI Sample Enterprise (4)

• Whats new
• uPortal native channel
• uPortal gateway that synchronizes passwords
• Directory service gateway
• uPortal binary distribution (including Tomcat)
• OpenLDAP binary distribution that is used as the
  enterprise directory server in the sample
  enterprise

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What is ConnectMAX?

• ConnectMAX a full-featured enterprise service
  bus for developing and administering OpenEAI
  integrations and web services
• General connectors for plugging common classes of
  technology into ConnectMAX
• - flat files
• - relational database management systems (RDBMS)
• - web services
• - lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP)
• Application-specific connectors for integrating
  other student systems and business applications
  with ConnectMAX SAP, Welligent, CenterTrack,
  Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF), and
  more to come

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Benefits of ConnectMAX and the OpenEAI Technology
Methodology

• Reusable, well-supported, and robust integrations
• Insulate integration work from low-level
  application changes
• Improve analysis and integration project
  management
• Reduce latency of integrations, moving toward
  real-time integrations
• Improve data integrity with rigor of methodology,
  central error reporting, and administration
  services
• Integration technology upgrade to make EAI
  compatible and more consistent with the SchoolMAX
  J2EE architecture

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What is ConnectMAX?
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Demonstration
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Questions?
Contact Steve Wheat (swheat_at_openii.com)