Integration Requirements
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Integration requirements
Standard approaches to integration are complicated when mobile devices are used instead of traditional, fixed-location clients. Asynchronous integration is no longer an exception to a standard business process; it becomes one of the primary business scenarios.
As such, an integration platform needs to have robust asynchronous capabilities for what are known as "long-running processes" or processes that may take hours, days or even weeks to be completed-as opposed to synchronous processes such as those that might be conducted from within a network.
In those traditional scenarios, if communication is broken between the client and the server, the business process simply stops. Most of us have probably been at a bank and heard a teller say, "I'm sorry, our systems are offline and you'll have to wait." With a mobile integration scenario, offline status is to be expected much of the time. Therefore, a process must be able to be transacted as far as it can be and then resume once communication is established.
For this reason, e-mail integration is likely to be an important requirement. On a practical basis, we cannot expect a mobile application user to keep checking back into the application to see if the process has resumed. An approach that would be easier for users would be for an e-mail notification to be incorporated into the mobile device application design.
An e-mail message such as "Mrs. Jones, your travel request has been approved. Please click on the link below to complete your travel itinerary" will be far more welcome than an application data screen that says "No data available." An application integration platform with support for mail servers and protocols will enhance the return of the business user to the RIA to complete transactions.
