ABSTRACT
Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) and the Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) provide architectural concepts to design an integrated IT infrastructure in order to support business activities in a competitive environment, in terms of fl exibility, interoperability, and manageability. The aim of this chapter is to describe and compare both approaches as well as their suitability for different integration scenarios. The description of EAI and SOA starts with a brief introduction to basic interoperability concepts. Then, both approaches with their characteristics and their respective interoperability strategies are described. Subsequently, the potential benefi ts of integrated architectures like fl exibility and manageability are discussed in more detail. Examples of integration scenarios are given that show the possible application areas of EAI and the SOA.
