This section defines some of the integration concepts that are referenced in subsequent sections.
The IBM WebSphere InterChange Server business integration system includes a core infrastructure (InterChange Server and the toolset), which support the development and execution of configurable, modular integration components. The integration components fulfill different roles and you develop them to work together. For example, connectors communicate with applications, business objects hold data, and collaboration templates define business process logic.
Typically you develop integration components in the context of an interface. An interface is a collection of integration components that work together to automate a business process. For instance, one interface might synchronize employee records between PeopleSoft and SAP. Another interface might automate order processing between Siebel and Oracle. Yet another interface might synchronize customer records between Siebel and SAP. An interface typically centers around a collaboration object, which is an instance of a collaboration template, with its ports bound to the components that are appropriate for the interface.
You might also develop integration components in the context of a solution. Solutions are collections of components and sometimes of interfaces as well that are designed to address broad business process needs, typically across an entire industry (such as retail or automotive).
Interfaces and solutions are conceptual groupings of integration components. That is, the components are grouped in the sense that they serve a particular purpose in the context of the interface or solution.
Integration component libraries, on the other hand, are groupings of the components in your development environment. You define a library in System Manager and System Manager creates a directory in the file system that represents the library. Within the library directory is a number of subdirectories for each type of integration component. When you create an integration component it is created as a file or group of files and stored in the proper subdirectory within the directory of the library.
Libraries might contain components that do not functionally belong to the interface you are working on, but which belong to another interface that another developer is working on in the business integration system. Libraries allow you to store all the component definitions involved in all the interfaces being developed at the customer site as part of the business integration system. You can even have libraries that correspond to systems at sites you no longer work at. Although there are no restrictions on how you create and use libraries, it is recommended that you maintain a one-to-one correlation between integration component libraries and InterChange Server instances.
User projects are the software implementations that support interfaces and solutions in the WebSphere InterChange Server toolset. An interface is a conceptual structure; you group components into the idea of an interface because according to your design the involved components are needed to automate that business process. An integration component library is not a conceptual structure--you create and work with it in the toolset--but it does not have to be particularly orderly; as described in Integration component libraries, a library can contain definitions for components that do not belong to the interface you are working on.
User projects are designed to support the need to organize integration components together so that they are viewed as belonging to an interface. User projects are collections of shortcuts to integration components in one or more libraries, so you can create one user project for each interface. Each user project might have shortcuts to some of the same components in a library because interfaces frequently share components. A customer synchronization interface and an order processing interface that both involved the SAP application, for instance, would both require the adapter for SAP, so the user projects that correspond to those interfaces would both have shortcuts to the definition for the SAP connector.
Although interfaces and solutions can satisfy business requirements themselves, they are in turn typically developed in the context of a business integration system. A business integration system is a collection of the interfaces and solutions required to satisfy the business integration and automation requirements of a customer site. The development of a business integration system might occur in phases, where the interfaces are grouped by priority and developed and pushed into production by priority so that more pressing needs are met while maintaining realistic goals and schedules.
WebSphere InterChange Server is the software infrastructure that provides business process integration and automation. When you install InterChange Server on a computer and start the server, you start a server instance. A server instance hosts the business integration system that is comprised of all the interfaces that satisfy the integration requirements of the customer. As described in WebSphere InterChange Server development model, each developer on the project should maintain their own local instance of InterChange Server. Additionally, there should at least be instances of InterChange Server dedicated to testing the business integration system as a whole and to hosting the production release of the system.