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White Paper
TIA Architecture Overview
White Paper Architectural Overview
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Contents
Introduction 3
About this Document 3
TIA Solution Architecture 4
TIA Foundation Tier 4
TIA Middleware Tier 5
TIA Consumer Tier 5
On TIA and Oracle 6
The Four TIA Sub-architectures 6
The TIA Rich User Experience 7
TIA ADF Pillars 7
TIA ADF Domains 8
TIA ADF Applications 8
TIA ADF Presentation 8
Further Reading on ADF 8
Integrating with the TIA Solution 9
TIA Web Services 9
TIA ICom 11
Further Reading on TIA Web Services and TIA ICom 12
TIA for Business Intelligence Solutions 12
Further Reading on TIA BII 12
Briefly on TIA Security 13
TIA Security Model 13
Further Reading on TIA Security 13
TIA Technology A/S
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Introduction
About this Document
This document describes from a technical angle the concepts and components that constitute
the TIA Solution architecture. The paper is primarily intended for readers who aim for an
overall introduction to the TIA Solution from an architectural view point. Readers who need a
deeper understanding of the TIA Solution architecture should refer to the TIA Wiki or the more
specialized papers delivered by TIA, such as how to extend, customize and personalize the
TIA Solution. Please refer to the concluding paragraphs of all main sections within this
overview paper for information on how to learn more on the topics.
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TIA Solution Architecture
Figure 1: The TIA Solution Architecture is a three-tier model that separates business logic from interfaces and clients or consumers.
The TIA Solution is organized into a multitier architecture that allows for maximum reuse of
business functionality and flexible cross-channel accessibility. By following a multitier
approach the TIA architecture separates core transaction centric business functionality from
user interfaces and other integration points, e.g. web services.
• TIA Foundation Tier is based on Oracle Database 11g and encapsulates all TIA business
logic spanning policy, product, party, claims, account, life, and reinsurance.
• TIA Middleware Tier relies on proven components of Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g and is
responsible for hosting the user interfaces based on Oracle Application Development
Framework and Oracle Forms.
• TIA Consumer Tier contains mobile and web-based clients and other types of consumers.
TIA Foundation Tier
The very core of the TIA Solution lies within TIA Foundation Packages. These packages are a
collection of highly reusable PL/SQL packages allowing for access to the core insurance model
from either a business task oriented perspective supporting e.g. quoting or MTA, or using a
more CRUD-like approach by directly addressing e.g. parties, policies or claims entities.
TIA Foundation Packages are also exposed in two additional wrappings through TIA SOA
Packages and TIA ADF Entities.
TIA SOA Packages categorizes TIA business functionality into a layered service model in
alignment with the definition created by Thomas Erl in his 2007 book “SOA - Principles of
Service design”. These principles are widely accepted as a de facto standard for designing
service-oriented software.
TIA ADF Entities is an abstraction of the underlying PL/SQL foundation packages that allows
for seamless integration to the Oracle Application Development Framework stack which
constitutes the backbone of the TIA 7 user interface.
TIA allows for bulk import or export of data using the TIA Staging Area that acts as a relay for
data being transported between TIA and its surroundings. Data can be processed using
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queuing mechanisms that allow asynchronous processing and volume throttling to minimize
impact of external communication on the overall system performance.
TIA Middleware Tier
The primary responsibility of the TIA Middleware Tier is to host the TIA end-user applications
and integration points. As such, the middleware tier contains no business logic and relies
entirely on the functionality of the underlying foundation tier. TIA adheres to the design
principle of pushing all business logic as far down the architecture stack as possible to avoid
redundancy and allow for a high degree of cross-channel business functionality reuse.
TIA 7 offers a completely new user interface tailored for the end-users in the back office of the
insurer, e.g. the claims handlers. The TIA ADF user interface is built as a true Oracle Fusion
Middleware application following best-practices within the model-view-control paradigm. The
user interfaces delivers rich role based functionality for efficient human task handling within
the TIA Solution and is also the main console for tailoring the TIA Solution to customer
specific business processes and rules.
Version 7 also includes the TIA Forms user interface. This classic TIA user interface is well-
known to existing customers and has in its present form been part of the TIA Solution since
version 5. From an architectural perspective the TIA Forms revision delivered in version 7 is
very similar to the previous version. Main changes have been moving forms integrated
business logic into the TIA Foundation Tier for reuse in TIA ADF. For more information on the
TIA Forms user interface and architecture, please refer to Oracle Forms Development
Standards and Oracle Forms User Interface Standards articles in the TIA Wiki..
The TIA Middleware Tier also acts as a common integration point for providing external access
to the TIA Solution. TIA Web Services delivers a WS-I compliant interface for accessing the
vast functionality of the foundation tier via the TIA SOA Packages. The web service interface is
designed for easy building of portals and other custom end-user applications on top of TIA.
Extensions to the TIA Web Services catalogue can even easily be implemented following the
design guidelines and patterns of the TIA Services Development Guide.
The middleware tier also contains the TIA ICom adapter components that are used for
communicating with the staging area in the foundation tier. TIA ICom Adapters leverages
Oracle Adapters for easy and robust integration to a wide variety of packaged applications,
legacy systems and mainframes such as SAP and CICS using numerous technologies and
protocols, e.g. ftp, JMS, and AQ.
TIA Consumer Tier
From a TIA perspective the only TIA component in the TIA Consumer Tier is the TIA Sales App
which is an iPad application for sales support built in Objective C on top of TIA Web Services.
The ADF and Forms based end-user applications of the middleware tier are both accessed
using standard web browser clients. Alongside web service consumers (e.g. portal solutions)
these clients are considered a conceptual part of the TIA Consumer Tier since TIA delivers no
components in this tier.
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On TIA and Oracle
For more than 20 years TIA customers have benefitted from a TIA Solution based on Oracle
Database technology, and with Version 5 (released in 2005) the cooperation naturally evolved
into also including the Java based Oracle Fusion Middleware platform.
In Version 7 TIA again follows Oracle and market best-practices for innovative software
development by leveraging further the Java EE platform investment. Oracle Application
Development Foundation is the solid basis for TIA’s completely revisited role based user
interface delivering a customer centric, market-leading user experience.
The Four TIA Sub-architectures
Conceptually, the TIA Solution architecture can be perceived as four separate sub-
architectures – all sharing a technical platform and based on a common foundation.
TIA ADF is the sub-architecture of the new Oracle Fusion Middleware-based user interface
introduced with TIA 7. TIA ADF adheres to the model-view-control pattern for application
design and is based on the Oracle Application Development Framework architecture.
TIA Integration addresses (1) the architecture for the service model that underlies the
service-oriented capabilities of the TIA Solution, i.e. TIA Web Services, and (2) the
architecture designed for TIA initiated data transport for integrating TIA and the
surrounding application landscape – TIA ICom.
TIA BII constitutes the sub-architecture of the TIA business intelligence interface which is
tailored for extracting the insurance data to load into enterprise business intelligence
solutions.
TIA Forms is the sub-architecture for the user interface prior to Version 7. TIA Forms will
not be addressed in this overview. For further reading on the subject refer to Oracle Forms
Development Standards and Oracle Forms User Interface Standards articles in the
TIA Wiki.
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The TIA Rich User Experience
Figure 2: TIA ADF is a three-layered architecture stack that separates model and view-controllers for structural decomposition and maximal reuse.
The TIA ADF user interface is built as a true Oracle Fusion Middleware application following
best-practices within the model-view-control paradigm. TIA ADF is split into a number of
pillars that decomposes the application into functional areas that either encapsulates a specific
business area or offers common cross-application functionality.
The TIA ADF architecture is a three-layer model that allows for maximum reuse and
manageability across pillars. The TIA ADF Domain layer is a pure ADF model layer offering
an object presentation of the underlying TIA relational model, the TIA ADF Application layer
delivers business area specific ADF sub-applications, and the TIA ADF Presentation layer
assembles these sub-applications into the actual end-user application, i.e. the TIA Web App.
TIA ADF Pillars
The TIA ADF application is divided into business specific pillars and technical cross-application
pillars. Business specific pillars exist for Account, Case, Claim, Commission, Complaint,
General Ledger, Life, Party, Policy, Reinsurance, and Service Supplier. The more technical
pillars Batch, Common, Data Exchange, and Data Warehouse deliver cross-application
functionality.
To allow for maximal reuse and manageability each pillar consists of separate domain and
application modules.
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TIA ADF Domains
The overall purpose of the TIA ADF Domain layer is to deliver an object model representation
of the TIA relational model in terms of ADF View and ADF Entity objects. The layer is built on
top of the TIA ADF Entities of the TIA Foundation Tier and contains one ADF model module for
each pillar.
Each ADF domain model provides access to all functionality and all data fields of a specific
business area. As an example the Policy ADF domain module provides access to all data fields
and in the Policy area – both named fields and flex fields are accessible.
TIA ADF Applications
The TIA ADF Application layer holds a number of sub-applications – one for each business or
technical pillar. Each sub-application is designed to work independently of other sub-
applications, but is allowed to reuse TIA ADF Domain modules from other pillars. As an
example, the Account sub-application is allowed to access the TIA ADF Domain modules of
both the Party and the Account areas, but it is not allowed to access the Party sub-application
in the ADF Application layer.
TIA ADF Presentation
The TIA end-user web application – TIA Web App – is composed from the ADF task flows of
the underlying sub-applications and a separate skinning module. Figure 3 illustrates how TIA
Web App is assembled from ADF task flows from multiple sub-application pillars.
Figure 3: TIa Web App is composed from the sub-applications from the TIA ADF Application layer. In the sceenshot the orange boxes highlight ADF task flows from the Case sub-application (top) and Policy (bottom).
TIA delivers a separate module for customizing the skinning of the web application. Figure 3
shows the default skin delivered out-of-the-box with TIA 7.
Further Reading on ADF
Oracle Fusion Developer Guide: Building Rich Internet Applications with Oracle ADF
Business Components and Oracle ADF Faces, by Frank Nimphius and Lynn Munsinger, 2009,
Oracle Press
Oracle JDeveloper 11g Handbook: A Guide to Fusion Web Development, by Duncan Mills,
Peter Koletzke, and Avrom Roy-Faderman, 2009, Oracle Press
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Documentation on Oracle Technology Network
Integrating with the TIA Solution
The TIA Solution architecture is open by design and prepared to fit into any enterprise
application landscape – small or large. For integration purposes the TIA architecture offers two
main approaches, namely TIA Web Services which are primarily for online integration from
e.g. enterprise or customer portals, and TIA ICom which is mainly designed to target import
and export data initiated by the TIA Solution due to scheduled jobs or business events.
TIA Web Services
Figure 4: The TIA Web Service architecture is layered and spans the foundation and middleware tiers. The Tia Consumer Tier is not considered a part of the TIA WebServices architecture, but is included to illustrate potential consumers of TIA Web Services.
The TIA Web Services architecture spans multiple components and layers of the TIA
Foundation Tier and the TIA Middleware Tier as illustrated in Figure 4.
The TIA Foundation Tier includes three types of PL/SQL service packages that expose TIA core
functionality in compliance with service-oriented design principles. These service packages
include no business logic as such, but merely set transaction boundaries and wrap the
underlying foundation packages in business friendly ways.
The TIA Middleware Tier wraps the service packages further into WS-I basic profile compliant
web services, and offers a framework for declaratively adding web services policies for e.g.,
management, security, and addressing purposes.
In the following sections the various components and layers of the web services architecture
are explained starting from external service interface of the TIA Middleware Tier, and moving
down the stack to the service packages of the TIA Foundation Tier.
Web Service Gateway
All web service messages pass through the TIA Service Gateway. The gateway intercepts and
inspects all request and response messages, and makes sure to execute all necessary policy
assertions. It is also the responsibility of the Web Service Gateway to restrict which services
and operations to expose to consumers.
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The gateway is based on Oracle Web Services Manager which is part of the Oracle Fusion
Middleware Platform. Hence, all policy assertion types supported by Oracle Web Services
Manager are available for configuration with TIA Web Services.
TIA does not deliver a full set of policy assertions out-of-the-box, as many of these policies
depend highly on customer specific company rules and regulations.
Web Service Mediator
The Web Service Mediator provides a flexible real-time backbone where all TIA Web Services
are exposed having typed payloads using the Web Services Definition Language (WSDL). The
component is based on the Oracle Mediator which is part of Oracle Fusion Middleware. At its
core, the mediator is an application framework providing a distributed, heterogeneous,
message oriented environment for maximal business service flexibility, reusability and overall
responsiveness.
On the mediator platform, a set of WS-I compliant routing web services are deployed with the
purpose of receiving the actual TIA Web Service requests. The routing services perform data
mapping, schema validation, etc. and finally forward requests to the Service Adapters.
Service Adapters
The main purpose of the Service Adapter is to transform service call XML requests into
invocations of the PL/SQL based Entity Services or Task Services of the TIA Foundation Tier.
From a technical angle this includes handling and maintaining JDBC connections, building Java
object representations from SOAP payloads using the Java Architecture for XML Binding
(JAXB), etc.
Task Services
Task Services all have business related functional boundaries that are directly associated with
specific business tasks. Task Services relate directly to business domains, so coarse-grained
Task Services exist for e.g., Policy, Claim and Account. As such, and the boundaries of these
services are dictated by these domains.
Task services are inherently less reusable than e.g. Entity Services as they are dependent on
the specific functional domain within which they operate. On the other hand they are highly
usable for customers building their own client or self-service modules as they handle real
business tasks. Most Task Services are available for external consumption.
Entity Services
Entity Services provide an object-oriented abstraction of the TIA data model and can be
characterized as CRUD (Create, Read and Update) style services. The entity services are
designed for reuse and are business centric as they manipulate TIA business objects such as
Company, Department, Postal codes etc. Selected Entity Services are exposed for external
consumption.
Utility Services
Utility Services are technical services that provide highly reusable and generic functionality for
e.g., user handling. Utility Services are used by Entity Services and Task Services.
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TIA ICom
Figure 5: The TIA ICom architecture is layered and spans the foundation and middleware tiers. The Tia Consumer Tier is not considered a part of the TIA ICom architecture, but is included to illustrate that TIA ICom is designed to integrated to external parners using a wide variety of transport protocols and exchange formats.
ICom (Information Communicator) handles integration with external partners and endpoint
environments. The module is highly flexible and allows configuration of many different
interface types - file based, XML based and others. The module provides core functionality for
sending and receiving data as well as a unified user interface for data mapping, monitoring,
logging, error handling, re-processing and data life-cycle management. This document will
only explain the architecture components of the core ICom functionality. Please refer to the
further reading section at the end of this section for more information on the extensive user
interface support for ICom.
The ICom sub-architecture spans the TIA Middleware Tier and the TIA Foundation Tier. The
middleware tier is responsible for connecting to the external parties, and on the backend side
for transporting data in and out of the foundation tier. The foundation tier handles data
transformation and hosts a relay mechanism for the exchange data, the ICom Staging Area.
In the following sections the components of the TIA ICom architecture are explained.
Partner Communication Layer
Outbound data transport and third party connectivity is handled by Oracle JCA Adapters in the
Partner Communication Layer. The layer leverages the Oracle JCA Adapter framework which
includes adapters for many types of technologies, legacy applications, or packages
applications. Relying on this framework, TIA is accessible to virtually any third party data
provider or consumer.
Backend Communication Layer
The Backend Communication Layer is responsible for transporting data further down the
application stack to the foundation tier, and is also based on the Oracle JCA Adapter
framework. In this case the JCA adapter for Oracle Advanced Queuing is used for de-queuing
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and en-queuing of data to database queues. The queuing mechanism ensures true
asynchronous decoupling of the TIA Foundation Tier and third parties.
ICom Composite Layer
The Oracle SOA Composite Application framework of the ICom Composite Layer is the glue
that binds together outward adapters and inward adapters. For every type of ICom integration
an Oracle SOA Composite Application encapsulates the relevant adapters along with BPEL
scripts that describe the actual data flow for that specific integration.
Oracle Advanced Queuing
The Oracle Advanced Queuing layer of the foundation tier hosts the actual database queues
that connect upwards to the middle tier and downwards to the ICom Staging Area.
ICom Staging Area
The staging area is the where the ICom responsibility either ends by leaving incoming data for
appropriate subsequent business event triggering, or starts by picking up data selected for
third party exchange.
Further Reading on TIA Web Services and TIA ICom
TIA Service Catalogue
ICom in the TIA Wiki
TIA for Business Intelligence Solutions
The TIA Business Intelligence Interface (BII) makes it easy for TIA customers and their data
warehouse resources to extract relevant data from TIA to update their data warehouse in a
standardized way.
TIA BII includes a separate staging area and mechanisms for synchronizing this staging area
with the contents of the TIA production database. TIA BII can be setup to maintain history
(versions) of data when that is needed, or to maintain only the most recent records.
Synchronization scheduling is flexible and allows for dependencies to the overall batch
calendar, or for independent update cycles.
One of the BII solutions that can be used with TIA for reporting purposes is SAS® Intelligence
for TIA. It links the analytical layer to your TIA Solution and draws the reports you need to
estimate the operational, financial and market-related aspects of an activity. The reports are
based on roles and adjusted to the needs for insight and knowledge you require as sales
manager liability manager, industry holder, administrative manager, actuary, finance manager
and divisional directors.
Further Reading on TIA BII
TIA BII in the TIA Wiki
SAS4TIA – Fact Sheet
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Briefly on TIA Security
In a production setting TIA will most often co-exist with numerous other applications and
systems, and across different implementations the infrastructure and network configurations
may vary enormously. This makes every TIA implementation unique, and understanding how
the TIA architecture is designed to accommodate for non-functional abilities is important.
In this section the overall architecture design of selected non-functional topics are explained.
The intention is to provide a foundation for making the right decisions on how to make TIA fit
into an existing architecture, and how to get the most value out of TIA from a technical
architecture perspective.
TIA Security Model
The TIA Security Model is designed to guard the core functionality and data residing in the TIA
Foundation Tier. The model delivers role based access control leveraging the role concept
within Oracle Database. Hence, fundamental for this model is that every TIA user is
represented by a separate database user.
Security is integrated across channels using Oracle Fusion Middleware security concepts, so
accessing TIA using the TIA ADF user interface or TIA Web Services relies on the exact same
role based security model, i.e. Oracle Platform Security Services (OPSS) which is based on
Java Authentication an Authorization Services (JAAS).
Authentication
TIA supports various patterns for user authentication to support different customer needs. The
most simple authentication mechanism is to let TIA challenge users to provide username and
password and then validate these against user information in the database. TIA can also
support more complex authentication scenarios – such as single sign-on – where
authentication is provided by some other part externally to TIA, e.g. by Microsoft Active
Directory or some other LDAP compliant component. TIA delivers a JAAS compliant
authentication provider that allows TIA to take part in a number of alternative scenarios.
Please refer to the references on OPSS and JASS in the concluding paragraph of this section to
learn more on the options.
Authorization
Every TIA interaction relies on an underlying database session in which all access to core data
and functionality takes place. At logon the user is assigned his or hers designated role for that
session only. During the session the assigned role is used for managing functional
authorization. At log out the session ends and the role assignment no longer exists.
Further Reading on TIA Security
Security in the TIA Wiki
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TIA, the TIA Solution is a trademark of TIA Technology A/S
Copyright© 1986-2012 TIA Technology A/S. All copyrights, trademarks,
and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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The contents of this document are continually subject to amendment without
prior notice. Although due care and diligence has been taken to ensure accuracy
of this document, TIA Technology A/S does not undertake any liability for the
accuracy of the document, including errors and omissions.
This document shall not impose any obligations on TIA Technology A/S by any
means.
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