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BEA eLink Overview

BEA eLink is a family of off-the-shelf Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) products that leverage BEA's transaction platform to integrate existing legacy applications with customer-focused and business-to-business e-commerce initiatives. The family consists of a set of application and database adapters, a data transformation product, and a business process automation product that all run on an infrastructure that provides industry-leading scalability, reliability, manageability, and web-enablement. Figure 1 shows an architectural overview of the BEA eLink product family.

Figure 1 BEA eLink Overview

eLink Platform Overview

Product Details

All of the products in the BEA eLink family share capabilities derived by leveraging BEA's mission-critical, bet-your-business transactions platform. This includes BEA eLink Adapters running on the BEA eLink Platform, and the Data Integration Option (DIO) and Business Process Option (BPO) running on the BEA eLink Foundation.

BEA eLink Platform and eLink Foundation

Two products form the basis of the BEA eLink family: The eLink Platform and the eLink Foundation. Intended for customers with minimal EAI requirements, the eLink Platform supports eLink Adapters only. The eLink Foundation meets the requirements of more complex EAI scenarios. It supports the Data Integration and Business Process Options, and contains bundled functionality that enables applications integrated using eLink to be called by Java applications (with no additional programming). The eLink Foundation requires the eLink Platform.

Application Adapters

BEA eLink Adapters provide access to external applications, with out-of-the-box functionality (no programming required). These include industry-leading:

BEA plans to deliver additional adapters providing out-of-the-box integration with major packaged software applications. These adapters will require the BEA eLink Platform.

Internet and Integration Adapters

Additional BEA eLink Adapters enable integration with Internet technologies and messaging products. The BEA eLink Adapter for Broadvision enables web client pages to be personalized by Broadvision, based on content obtained from applications integrated using the BEA eLink Platform. The BEA eLink Adapter for XML automatically translates XML-formatted data into the BEA eLink normalized format. BEA eLink Adapter for MQSeries makes it possible to accept or send messages asynchronously and transparently from applications integrated using BEA eLink and IBM MQSeries.

Adapter Development Kit

BEA provides an Adapter Development Kit to assist in the development of BEA eLink Adapters for custom applications.

Support for Industry Standards

BEA eLink offers compliance with the Open Group's X/Open standards including support of the XA standard for two-phase commit processing, the X/Open XATMI application programming interface (API), and XPG standards for language internationalization. BEA eLink is extensible, and ships with development tools that can be used to create customized components in C, C++, or COBOL.

Integration with Databases and Resource Managers

By leveraging capabilities inherent in BEA eLink, integration can be provided to any RDBMS, OODBMS, file manager or queue manager (including XA two-phase commit transactions).

Data Integration Option

The BEA eLink Data Integration Option (DIO) provides a cost-effective alternative to writing programs that translate diverse data models used by different applications into a common data format. It handles complex translation with unmatched power and scalability.

Business Process Option

The BEA eLink Business Process Option (BPO) extends BEA eLink's powerful environment for distributed execution of business rules and processes, incorporating scalability, and fail-over and recovery support. It also helps to automate tasks in the business process, and dynamically respond to business events and exceptions

Web Application Integration

Applications integrated using BEA eLink are automatically ready to be called by Java applications from across the Web, with no extra programming required. This capability is delivered with the BEA eLink Foundation.

Configuration Expert

The Configuration Expert provides programmers with an efficient way to generate the eLink Platform configuration information without having to bother with the configuration syntax details. This capability is delivered with the BEA eLink Foundation.

Features

Table 1-1 BEA eLink Foundation Features
Feature Benefit
Online

BEA eLink products are based on an infrastructure that is inherently online. The Internet economy is driving business to the Web, which is by definition online.

An EAI solution based on an asynchronous messaging infrastructure may be adequate for integrating applications within an enterprise, but it will hamper extending those applications to the Web. It is difficult to make something inherently asynchronous behave in an online fashion. The strategic choice for a business pro-actively embracing the new world of e-commerce is to start with an EAI infrastructure that is fundamentally online.

Reliable

BEA eLink products are reliable and highly available.

E-Generation users have no tolerance for down time - a competitive offering is just a click away. The built-in reliability of BEA eLink keeps your environment available in the event of hardware and software failures, providing users with 24x7 access to your e-commerce offering.

Scalable

Multiple instances of all the BEA eLink products can be dynamically created and distributed over multiple systems, insuring fast response times and throughput even when the number of users or the load on the system increases sharply.

From the perspective of an e-generation user, scalability is related to high availability. It doesn't matter to your customer whether something has failed or a server is overloaded, not being able to conduct e-commerce appears the same: you are closed for business! All BEA eLink products, including the options and adapters, are scalable. Scalability means your IT staff can adjust immediately to peak loads, providing continuously fast responses to your customers.

XA-Transactions

BEA eLink Platform and BEA eLink Foundation provide transparent support for XA-transactions.

Use an EAI infrastructure based on messaging alone and all you get is guaranteed "message" delivery. If a "message" between integrated applications translates into multiple reads and writes, you will have to program each application to recover from in-flight failures, or face the business risk associated with corrupt or inaccurate data. This risk is eliminated if your applications support XA-transactions and are integrated online using BEA eLink.

Manageable

All BEA eLink products can be managed from a single console, which can be extended to any application integrated using the BEA eLink Platform, which supports SNMP.

A single management view of all of the pieces of your EAI solution is a capability unique to BEA eLink. Having a big picture of how your integrated enterprise is operating is invaluable for quickly locating, identifying, and resolving problems that may arise. This helps your IT department meet service-level agreements and keeps your customers happy.

No Programming Needed

BEA eLink products do not require any programming in order to work together, or to work with the applications they integrate.

BEA eLink products eliminate the development effort required to connect applications together - a necessary struggle if your EAI infrastructure is based on store-and-forward messaging. The emphasis with BEA eLink products is on configuration, not coding. In addition to saving programming costs, your developers are free to focus on building new applications that improve your competitive edge, rather than bothering with integration interfaces.

Web Enabled

Applications integrated using the BEA eLink Platform and Foundation can be called from Java applications, with no extra programming.

The BEA Jolt product is bundled with the BEA eLink Foundation. It allows Java applications, such as servlets managing web browsers, to call applications integrated using the BEA eLink Foundation, with no extra programming. Any investment in integrated applications within an enterprise using eLink is automatically web-enabled - a benefit usually not found in EAI solutions based on store-and-forward messaging.