Portals for Enterprise App Integration

Does your enterprise have one application for accounting, another for CRM, a

third for ERP and so on? If so, how are your users accessing them? The most

common scenario would be that they need a separate user ID and pass code to

access each system and each system in turn is in a



separate silo. We talked about integrating both the application as well as its
data in the last two articles in this series. Seamless integration of both can

be easily achieved if we had a portal for our application set. 

By 'portal', we do not mean a page of links-that would be the simplest

case. We are defining our enterprise application portal as a singular point for

your users to access and use at least some of your applications. Ideally, this

portal would also link all the different credentials your user needs using one

multipurpose credential. Possibly that could be as simple as a Smart Card or

another user ID. Before we go on, let us define the features we would like our

portal to have.

Portal features



Broadly speaking, we should add some fundamental features to our portal:

1. Singular identity management: The system would prompt the user during

initial access for credentials and then transparently authenticate him when he

accesses any sub-feature or application. This frees the him from having to

remember multiple credentials.

2. Combined interface for applications: This in fact is the very definition

of a 'portal.' Instead of having to remember multiple addresses or program

names and menus, the user can access just the relevant sections of those

applications.

3. Web based access: Naturally, such a portal cannot be a a rich desktop

application). Our enterprise portal is best built using Web technologies and

presented as an Intranet/Internet website. Users can then access the portal

using just a Web browser and this lets it be used for more than one purpose.

Enterprise portals can combine multiple applications as well as provide internal news, calendars and upcoming events, etc to improve employee productivity

4. Dashboard: Because we can poll different applications for information and

even query for authorization, we can include features like at-a-glance views of

pending tasks, schedules of various kinds, messages from co-workers, snapshots

from various databases and so on according to the user's preferences as well

as his role.

Pre-requisites



Now, it is not necessary that all your applications (those already deployed) be
friendly or amenable to such portalization. So, what should an application have

or do that can make them portalizable?

1. Implement connectors, API or Web services: These enable us to easily hook

on to the application and pass information. Web services should be preferred

since they work both for traditional client/ server kind of applications as well

as Web based ones. Plus, they're also easier to maintain and change.

2. Be able to accept inputs from an external source: Instead of re-inventing

the wheel for data validation and cascading updates across several database

objects, we could opt to go through each application's own mechanism. For

this, individual applications should allow external entry of data



without its own UI.

3. Publish capability information: A true enterprise portal would be a

front-end to an EAI resultant. This data would include information like: how to

connect to the application; what kinds of credentials it would accept; what

functions to call and what those functions do; what parameters do you pass into

the functions; what output would you get, from where and why; and so on.

Through this series we have consistently found ourselves facing one answer-enterprise

knowledge. Different systems across your enterprise are silently accumulating

information. This information can benefit you in a myriad of ways. The best way

to achieve that is the sum total of our learning so far.