DESIGNING A LONG-TERM INTEGRATION ARCHITECTURE FOR PROVISIONING

TNC 2007 22 May 2007, Copenhagen

Aida Omerovic Scientist & project manager – UNINETT FAS, NORWAY

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-- Best practices from building architecture of an enterprise integration platform for provisioning

in heterogeneous, distributed systems

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Business model

Serving Norwegian higher education sector; an integrated part of NREN

Expertise in integration, security, standardization, development/operation, contracting, deployment etc.

Contributing to innovation and excellence Extensible initiatives - too demanding for

individual organizations but feasible and cost-effective with joint effort and shared resources

Significant savings, improvement of service level, new use areas, deliverables and demands

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Background

Provisioning: what and why? Objective: efficient, dependable collaboration

of systems and users A set of large scale, software intensive and

security critical systems Distributed, decentralised, heterogeneous

applications Synergies in terms of value chain improvement

and new services from system interactions A “system of systems” offering more than the

sum of the individual applications

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Provisioning architecture in a cross-organisational environment

Org A

Org B

Org C

Org XX

.

.

.

Message type 1

XML envelope

Integration architecture

Active directory

Archiving syst

Accounting system

HR syst

Procurement

Studens admin syst

...

LDAP

Oracle

DB, sql

update

File polling

WS

WS

Message type 2

XML envelope

Message type 3

XML envelope

WS

WS

XML file, ssh

Application xMessage type 4

XML envelope

Datafile, ssh

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The architectural layers

Integration framework

Service level management

Technical mechanisms, operational environment, interfaces supported

Transmission

Security (authentication, authorisation, signatures, encryption, decryption)

Syntax, data formatting

Semantics

Interfaces to services, dissemination

Requirements, metricsM

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Augmenting, merging

Processing, filtering, splitting

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Dataflow within the integration platform

XML ORG1

XML ORG3

Split SSH user1, usrs2, user3XML ORG2

XML ORG1 service1

XML ORG1 service3

XML ORG1 service2

XML ORG1 ...

XML ORG2...

XML ORG2 service1

Receival Deviation check

Dissemination

Merge with additional

(meta)data

Semantical eval. & content management

•Functional examples of the dataflow•Contents of data for provisioning•Metadata consensuses. •Handling, mapping and dissemination of metadata. •Optimization of the workflow•Support and enhancement of the value chain

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Important aspects

Modelling (working processes, dataflow) Risk analysis, simulation Security measures (a practical approach based

standards, models and risk analysis and covering the entire set of interacting systems/components)

Timely revisions upon changes Documentation Quality criteria of the platform Interoperability, maintainability and extensibility Maintenance of quality through monitoring Deduction of metrics

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General experiences

Beneficial to have full control over the integration architecture

Consistent interfaces, maintainable interactions, reusable and portable services, optimized dataflow

The critical success factors Compliance to standards, modularity and

dynamic configuration Data quality

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An exemplar use scenario

Service supplier: Reveal needs Design, risk analysis, test plans Implement interfaces on architecture

and application Extend services within architecture for the new interfaces Documentation, in-house testing Piloting Information

Institution-service supplier Legal agreements Configuration Interface validation (transfer,

syntax, semantics) Testing Deployment and user education

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An exemplar use scenario cont.

HR/student administrative system->

user administration system->provisioning architecture ->dissemination to a set of

admin. Systems

One vs. multitude of messages, contents

Location of operational environments

Provisioning of user data into a set of applications: accounting system users, employees, catalog users and archiving system end users: Supply the data from the authoritative systems into the UAS Identify data sources and destinations Identify conditions on the processes Verify syntax, semantics, transfer mechanisms, security measures and frequency Test Develop and document routines, policies Deploy An exemplar scheema for incoming

interface, deduced from IMS: http://forskningsnett.uninett.no/trofast/Integrasjon/Importformat.xsd

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An exemplar building block: externally available syntax and semantics validation service

Standardised interfaces Service specific rules Dynamic, extensible

rules

Used by customer organisations and vendors for validation, development and testing

Multi-level checking and reporting User-friendly and reliable format -and

contents analysis

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Conclusions A centralized integration architecture is a necessity

when enabling interactions between distributed applications with heterogeneous technologies or between distributed organizations

A balance has to be made between the functional needs and the technical choices

The architecture includes a variety of built in, transformable and mutually compatible, interfaces.

The paper focuses on the scientific, mainly design-related, issues of developing a cross-organizational provisioning architecture, which supports an overall modeled or assumed optimal workflow at any time.

This is a toolbox to be used pragmatically, with best effort, butthere is no “silver bullet”!

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Questions/comments?

Thank you!

aida.omerovic@uninett.no