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Xcalia Definitions
Composite Application
With SOA, business services can be easily assembled for new "composite" applications instead of building them from code. A new form of integration that combines new code, or services, with pre-existing assets without impact to the original application. The value of composite application development is in its higher productivity and reduced costs. Without the proper assembly and orchestration techniques, composite applications will be difficult to maintain.
ETL
ETL stands for Extract, Transform, and Load. A process in data warehousing that extracts data from outside sources, transforms it to fit business needs, and loads it into the data warehouse. Data is always loaded into a data warehouse, whereas ETL describes process that loads any database. Can be used in a SOA environment to provide data to be used by services.
Orchestration
Defines the way actions that access services are chained together to execute a business process to request information or process a transaction. First generation orchestration tools rely on static workflow or specific languages like BPEL that must be defined during programming.
Workflow
The event-driven operation of a work procedure that defines
- how services are structured,
- who performs them,
- their relative order,
- how they are synchronized,
- how information flows,
- how services are being tracked.
Traditionally built through a graphical tool linking a chain of services to be used for a business application. Workflow-based applications are hard-coded and provide a static approach to the execution of a chain of services.
Service Mapping
A process to define the relationship between the application objects and the corresponding services to be used when the application is executed. Mapping can be done through a programming interface or a graphical mapping tool.
Dynamic Composition
An automated real-time process that selects services and defines when and the order that service actions are executed to complete a business process or transaction. The Xcalia Rules Engine dynamically computes the best sequences of the methods to accomplish a business function. As new services are added to the business model, they are described inside of the metadata repository and made available to the rules engine.
Metadata
Metadata is data about data; where that data is located and what it is used for. A good analogy is that of a library catalog card which contains data about the nature and location of a book. Defining metadata is required as the first step in Xcalia's dynamic composition; descriptions are done in the Xcalia Metadata repository. Xcalia Metadata is the complete description of the services and how data is manipulated in the data model and enables the creation of sequences to services calls.
Service
An executable piece of software that can be accessed by other services or applications. Business services represent an action, or a combination of actions that process requests or complete business transactions. The service user can access it without any knowledge at runtime. Business services are manipulated through a set of exposed interface definitions called methods. Xcalia manipulates business services at the method level.
Transaction
A type of processing in which the computer responds immediately to user requests (like an ATM). Each request is a transaction. The opposite of batch processing in which requests are stored and executed all at once.
There are four properties of an enterprise-level transaction:
- Atomicity: a transaction should be done or undone completely. In the event of a failure, all data rolls back to previous state.
- Consistency: a transaction should transform a system from one consistent state to another.
- Isolation: each transaction should happen independently of others occurring at the same time.
- Durability: Completed transactions should remain permanent, even during system failure.
- ++ Xcalia is actively involved in leading standard organizations
- ++ Discover Xcalia's products to assemble, deploy and manage composite applications on the Java and Microsoft .Net development platforms
- ++ Download and evaluate Xcalia Intermediation from Java, .Net or any SOAP enabled programming language
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