ABSTRACT
The term application integration is used to denote technologies that allow a system or application to integrate to another system or application. These technologies incorporate mechanisms that a calling application can use to interact with a target application. There are many scenarios when a calling application wants to interact with a target application. One example is an application needs information from another application for its processing. In this case, the application needing the information would be the calling application that sends a request to the target application for information. Another example is the order fulfillment process involving an order management application and a warehouse management application. In this process, the order management application receives the order and the warehouse management application fulfills the order. Because the order is entered in the order management application, the warehouse management application only knows the need for fulfillment when the order management application creates a fulfillment request in the warehouse management application. In this scenario, the order management application is the calling application that sends the transaction to the warehouse management application. Application integration is important to Business Process Management Systems (BPMSs) because most business processes involve applications as well as people. Thus, BPMS incorporates application integration technologies to achieve process management. There are several types of application integration technology.
