Connecting Applications..

We have developed numerous interfaces or “hooks” between custom applications, third-party software programs, databases and environments.

Depending on the need, web services or connectors would serve data via a bus or data inter-change pipes to provide an interface between applications that could be on the same network or across different environments.

Examples of simple interfaces could be

a Facebook application connecting and sharing information with a Drupal site.

or

a Custom Web CMS app generating a feed for distribution that could be in an Excel or XML format for delivery to an Enterprise FTP server.

Data Exchange

Your organization has over time generated a large inventory of software applications that has been either developed in-house or been licensed from a third-party vendor. Each application serves a business function, and uses its own content and resource to function.

However, the need to integrate applications will grow as the business requires to share valuable content. This could be to share information about the customer’s buying pattern between the order processing system and the marketing application or payment history for clients in the financial system with the customer service app.

While there are numerous methods for data exchange between applications, selecting the right method will depend on a number of factors including the technical environments the applications run in, the timely-ness of the data exchange, etc.

Broadly, some common methods for data exchange are:

• – Data Files
  This is a simple and effective way to exchange data. One application creates a file or set of files, typically in a CSV format (Comma Separated Values). While the receiving applications reads the file at a pre-determined schedule.
• – XML Files:
  Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. XML is a format that uses a markup language to add meta-information to data values and has become a standard for data exchange. Being a textual format, it allows for human readability while the xml meta tags allows for a simple and accurate data exchange mechanism.
• – SOA-Style Web-Service Integration using REST, XML-RPC or SOAP:
  Web-service integration does not copy data between systems, but information is exchanged over the web in real-time. The underlying aata is usually encoded using XML.