The enterprise server, or the back-end server, contains the existing
core business logic of the financial institution that is accessed
by the toolkit application. A toolkit application does not require
changes to such a system or changes to its messaging interface. This
is possible because the toolkit includes a rich set of back-end system
connector components and message formatters. BTT JCA SNA and Invoker
component are provided for SNA (LUA interfaces), JMS, EJB, WebServices,
and any other customer extensions.
On the other hand, if you have already built up the SOA based back-end
system such as ESB, the toolkit enables your applications to support
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) integration.
Bank Transformation Toolkit interfaces with WebSphere® Process
Server (which contains WebSphere ESB) for business
process automation and enterprise application integration. WebSphere Message Broker and WebSphere Business
Services Fabric can be added depending on the SOA requirements. But
typically, they do not interface with BTT directly.
The entire banking SOA reference architecture includes the following
flow and control concepts:
- Channel Interaction Orchestration
- Screenflow: A lightweight Web/Rich client tier control
mechanism (usually a finit-state-machine) that guides the user from
screen to screen. States and flows are encoded in XML.
- Channel Application Microflow: A lightweight Web/rich client tier
control mechanism that provides a structured way to organize channel
application operations such as screen flows, logging, reusable channel
specific logic, invocation of business processes, and invoking back-end
services. Tooling is specific to and integrated with the channel application
platform. Flows are visually designed and encoded in XML.
- Business Process Automation
- Macroflow: Long-running process or process involving human tasks
to be performed by multiple people. Encoded in BPEL as a linear process
or Business State Machines.
- Enterprise Application Integration
- Service Composition: The creation of a course-grained service
from a number of finer-grained services and simple flow logic. Usually
created using SCA components.
- Service Orchestration: Invocation of multiple services in the
context of a microflow or macroflow execution. A flow or state machine
can be used as the control construct to create a composite service
from element services.
- Routing and Transformation: Routing of a service request to a
service provider at runtime according to pre-determined rules and
the transformation of the service name, number and type of parameters,
and data structures as needed so as to insulate service consumers
from service providers.
- Dynamic Service Selection: Determination of how to resolve a service
binding at runtime.