Determining Integration Pattern
With this exercise, we start our journey into the eMagiz platform. This exercise will explain the business case used throughout all exercises linked to the Crash Course Platform Course. In the following exercises, we will guide you step by step through the platform so you can learn how to use it.
Should you have any questions, please get in touch with academy@emagiz.com.
1. Prerequisites
- Have read the “Intermediate - Discover your integration landscape” course.
2. Exercise
To kickstart your journey into the eMagiz platform, we have selected a set of exercises linked to the Crash Course Platform course that will guide you through the platform in building and validating your first integration. To start things off, we will introduce the business case in this exercise that will be used to model out the correct solution in eMagiz.
2.1 Business Case
Read and understand the following business case
ABC Logistiek B.V. is a medium-sized logistics provider offering land transport services in The Netherlands. For regulation compliance purposes, they are required to report their transport trip data to the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). The CBS requires this data from logistics providers across the country for the purpose of tracking national logistics performance. Logistics providers normally report their transport trip in batches through SFTP connection at 3 monthly intervals and, thus, does not happen on a daily basis. Different logistics providers may have different mileage, but ABC Logiestiek B.V. in particular sends 2-3 GBs of transport trip data every batch. At the same time, while they have to report to CBS, they are also communicating with their partners and customers to keep their business running. In this case, they are tracking and monitoring the location of the trucks carrying the goods, in which real-time data (-+ 15KBs data, every 30 seconds) is captured and transmitted to both their own and partners’ enterprise systems.
Logistics providers normally have different ways of working with their data and enterprise systems in their day-to-day operations. CBS is aware of this, and thus they introduced a common data model (see OTM as an example) for logistics providers to adhere to. Harmonizing this transport trip messages with other players also unlocks the possibility of easier communication and coordination with other partners in the network as well. As promising as this initiative seems, ABC Logiestiek B.V. is in fact using several enterprise systems (e.g., TMS, CRM, IoT systems, etc.) that mostly use proprietary data schema, message definitions, and communication protocols that do not have one-to-one relation with OTM. This makes them adjusting to their supply chain network challenging. Manual filling, copying, and pasting data from one system to another is no longer an option due to the amount of work required. Establishing custom one-to-one integrations is also indeed an option. But, this will impose steep operational costs, complexity, and risks in the long run for them. Therefore, the company approaches eMagiz to tackle this issue as eMagiz supports system integrations, message transformation, and routings through different options of integration patterns.
As a Business IT Consultant/Integration Specialist, you are to provide ABC Logistiek B.V. with a solution for their integration landscape. Particularly, how to approach their problem and which integration pattern(s) eMagiz offers that are suitable for their case.
2.2 Questions to Ask Yourself
Based on the business case described so far:
- What will be the integration pattern(s) supported by eMagiz suitable for them?
- Which functionality can be solved with the selected integration patterns?
- To propose a better solution for this business case, what other questions should be explored and answered?
- Can we make a decision tree/flowchart for this case based on what we know so far about the eMagiz Platform? For this, please check out: “Intermediate - Discover your integration landscape” course
3. Solution
Discuss internally within your team what will be the suitable solution, and why you think that A or B is the best solution.