Using BizTalk For Data Synchronization

• eStore order processing automation - Order Processing Pipeline system was developed to realize the task
• Data synchronization between Inventory Management system used for customer's firm trade stock managing and customer's eStore. But for all that eStore and warehouse managing system were purchase from different vendors, were installed on the different servers, were used Databases of different structures and were not provided for the direct integration laid by producers.

Finally in case of these tasks direct realization system may look like this

• eStore visitor places the orders which should be forwarded to the Order Processing Pipeline system for processing by sales officer and also should be forwarded to the Inventory Management system for goods reservation and stock changes
• The operator of Inventory Management system inputs the information on goods arrival to and retirement from stock. That should let to the following: sales officer notification on the order execution (by post), customer notification on the order execution (by post) and goods availability changing in eStore (e.g. if such good has come to the end on the stock)
• When processing the order sales officer should get the info on the order from eStore system and notify customer on his order execution (in the automatic mode)

Such scheme requires communication elements to be developed in each part of the system to provide connection with each subsystem required to interact with. This should certainly complicate the system in whole. And regarding the fact all the applications were developed by different vendors the task of integration all the applications in one system is complicated even greater.Using Biztalk Server 2006 EAI means has simplified the task of applications interaction providing.

Biztalk Server Advantages:

• Each application needs to have just one input-output point to get messages from and send to Biztalk server
• A set of ready adapters such as SOAP, HTTP, FTP, SQL, extends integration ability of dissimilar systems essentially. Besides there is an opportunity of overpatching some proper adapters (e.g. for QuickBooks);
• All the data conversion from the format is executed in one place on Biztalk server. Each system gets data from the server in format required. Information doesn't need to be converted additionally when going into the final system.
• Each message is being processed step by step and it's conversion for needs of different systems is also possible
• Data communication is executed asynchronously and in real-time, i.e. one system gets info on changes in data from another system with a small delay.

Data synchronization mechanism among system component parts

Let's use the scheme of Inventory Management and eStore coordination to illustrate the mechanism of interaction between the applications within ECPOSI system.

This scheme can be commented with the following:

• Stock system operator modifies data
• These changes result in database records modification in the system
• Triggers are created to the tables which require to synchronize their status with another systems. Each trigger prepares message to be forwarded to Service Broker of SQL Server 2005
• Triggers are created to the tables which require to synchronize their status with another systems. Each trigger prepares message to be forwarded to Service Broker of SQL Server 2005
• Soap web-service publishes message to Biztalk Server
• Orchestration processes message according to the coded algorithm
• Processed message (in this case message is presented as SQL Server updategram) is transmitted from orchestration to eStore SQL Server via SQL adapter
• eStore database gets actual data
• eStore user gets the access to new data that consider recent changes made by stock system operator almost instantly

The scheme realized with Biztalk Server 2006 and other EAI means is much simpler for such kind of projects relating to complicated data processing and integration of different systems.

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