Chapter 11. Enterprise integration
This chapter covers
- Exploring enterprise integration challenges
- Using Spring Batch in enterprise integration projects
- Combining Spring technologies: Batch, Integration, and MVC
IT systems are complex beasts: they can consist of hundreds of applications that don’t work in isolation and need to communicate with each other. An example of Spring Batch helping applications communicate is a batch job processing files from one application and writing data into the database of another application. The term enterprise integration refers to such communication techniques between applications. Because batch processes are often central to enterprise integration projects, this chapter is dedicated to explaining how to use Spring Batch and other Spring-related technologies in such projects. The online store application we use in this book is a typical enterprise integration project: the application imports product data from various systems (ACME and its partners) so that customers can browse and purchase products through the online store web interface. Figure 11.1 illustrates how enterprise integration fits between the online store application and other systems.
Figure 11.1. The online store application uses enterprise integration techniques to import product data from other systems.
