Developing integration solutions is not a simple task, despite the fact that the integration of individual databases, applications, and complete systems is increasingly becoming part of software engineers’ day-to-day work. In addition, developers of Enterprise Service Buses (ESBs); Enterprise Information Integration (EII) infrastructures; messaging systems; service-oriented architecture (SOA) frameworks; Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) tools; and software for data integration, all take very different approaches, and many organizations already have one or more different integration solutions in place. The Trivadis Integration Architecture Blueprint is the result of work on a large number of projects (not all of them successful), of detailed discussions with customers and specialists, and of careful study of the technical literature.

The development of the integration blueprint took several months, as the main objective was to structure the integration solution in such a way that standardized, tried-and-tested basic components could be combined to form a functioning whole, with the help of tools and other products. It was also important that the solution met customers’ requirements, and could be implemented without the excessive use of resources.

We believe that by structuring the integration layer into different, clearly defined levels and layers, and by assigning best practice patterns to these layers, we can make the process of developing integration solutions significantly simpler in practice.

The concept behind the Trivadis Integration Architecture Blueprint was developed by the authors, together with Fernand Hänggi and Albert Blarer, and formulated by Daniel Liebhart, Guido Schmutz, and Peter Welkenbach. Large parts of the book have been revised several times by the authors, and have also been the subject of intense debates in workshops. We would like to thank the reviewers Albert Blarer, Patrick Blaser, Christoph Pletz, and Karsten Krösch and, in particular, Tony Fräfel for his detailed input.

Further technical information is available on our website (www.trivadis.com) in the download area and the blog (under Know-How Community).

We would like to thank everyone who has contributed to this book in any way. This includes, in particular, the reviewers and our patient colleagues who were always prepared to discuss things in detail, and clarify any number of aspects of the book. We would also like to thank our customers and business partners, with whom we have worked on a variety of projects that have given us many interesting and enriching experiences. Finally, we would like to thank our colleagues, friends, families, the proofreaders, and the publishers for their patience.