WebSphere WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus, Version 6.0.1 Operating Systems: AIX, HP-UX, Linux, Solaris, Windows

Providing existing applications as services

There is a vast set of existing applications, in a variety of programming languages, that are valuable for use as services. You can use the service-oriented architecture (SOA) and WebSphere ESB to provide those applications as services, with little or no change to those applications.

One way to provide an existing application as a service is to create an SOA gateway that translates the interfaces of the existing application into SOA-compliant interfaces. This involves no disruption to the application coding, so does not need any regression testing of the application. The application can continue to be used without disruption, through the existing interfaces, but can have some performance impact caused by translating to SOA interfaces.

Another way is to add SOA interfaces to the application alongside its existing interfaces. This often results in better interface design and better overall performance because the SOA interfaces can be used without any translation overhead. The new SOA interfaces would need development and testing resources, and there can be some interruption in service as the new interfaces are deployed. After deployment, the application can be used through either the existing interfaces or the new SOA interfaces.

You can remodel the application into reusable SOA components, then combine those components into an SOA modular solution. This provides a more flexible application that can make better reuse of business logic, and benefit from SOA techniques and other modern programming practices. This way of providing existing applications as services has significantly more impact on the existing application and its use, and is typically most applicable to core systems.


Concept topic

Terms of Use | Rate this page

Timestamp iconLast updated: 13 Dec 2005
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/dmndhelp/v6rxmx/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.websphere.wesb.doc\concepts\cwesb_txfmbs.html

(C) Copyright IBM Corporation 2005. All Rights Reserved.
This information center is powered by Eclipse technology. (http://www.eclipse.org)