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ABSTRACT
Enterprise Applications are difficult to implement and maintain because they require a monolith of code to incorporate required business processes. Service-oriented architecture is one solution, but challenges of dependency and software complexity remain. We propose Event-Driven Service-Oriented Architecture, which combines the benefits of component-based software development, event-driven architecture, and SOA.
Keywords: Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Event-Driven Architecture (EDA), enterprise application, design and development methodologies
INTRODUCTION
As companies discover the importance and value of information for strategic decision-making, isolated, departmental, and non-integrated IT solutions are replaced by integrated enterprise applications (EAs) (Mitchell, 1996). EAs ensure that the same information is available throughout the whole company, between companies, and ultimately, throughout the entire supply chain for fast and reliable decisionmaking (El Sawy, Malhotra, Gosain, & Young, 1999). At the same time, researchers and practitioners alike have recognized the need for a flexible information technology infrastructure to gain and sustain a competitive advantage in today's fast-paced global marketplace (Brancheau, Janz, & Wetherbe, 1996; Byrd & Turner, 2001; Davenport & Linder, 1994).
Traditional EAs are constructed as a monolith of code that incorporates all the required business processes, making them difficult to implement, maintain, or extend (e.g., add new functionality). An additional challenge is that mergers and acquisitions create a diverse IT environment and the need to integrate different applications. IT organizations are embracing service-oriented architecture (SOA) to solve these problems associated with EA (Elfatatry, 2007; Marks, 2007). While there is much debate on an exact definition for SOA, a working definition is "the architectural style that supports loosely coupled services to enable business flexibility in an interoperable, technology-agnostic manner "(Knippel, 2005). A recent survey by the Yankee Group of Boston found that 75% of 473 enterprise buyers expect to invest in the infrastructure necessary to enable a service-oriented architecture (Mimoso, 2004), but there are few detailed reports on implementation.
Exceptions include Dietrich (2007) who describes a SOA-approach for mass customization and illustrates the approach as a case study example from the shoe industry. Another example is Vinci, a local-area SOA designed for rapid development and management of Web applications (Agrawal, Bayardo Jr., Gruhl, & Papadimitriou, 2002). A user-centric SOA, which allows users to publish their needs and let producers (software developers) provide services to meet...