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Tag Archives: Citizen Integrator

Challenges for the Citizen Integrator

02 Saturday Apr 2016

Posted by mp3monster in General, Oracle, Technology

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Tags

apiary, apiary.io, Boomerang, Citizen Integrator, Cloud, mockable, mockable.io, mocking, OIC - ICS, Oracle, REST, SOAP, SoapUI, testing, WSDL

cloudgs_integrationWe’ve been developing the example integrations to go with book on ICS and have encountered some interesting challenges for the Citizen Integrator (CI) when using an iPaaS (integration Platform as a Service). To say it in non techno speak  someone wanting to plumb system together without needing to be equipped and have the skills of a developer and just using the cloud. One such example is SOAP API testing, before connecting live systems together even a CI will probably want to check that you have mapped the data correctly – important when you’ve potentially got functions and repeating structures in the mapping. To go back to my old analogy that tools for a CI like ICS are the same as Excel to ERP. Then like when creating formulas in a spreadsheet you’re going to plumb in some numbers and check the formula’s results before using in anger.boomerang2b1366

So far so obvious, the fun comes not when you’re wanting to simulate the source event coming into the tool – this can be done through a raft of utilities from Chrome Browser extensions such as Boomerang, soapui_logoSoapUI for example. Things become a lot more challenging when   comes when you want the integration output to go to a mock SOAP API.   The choices available are limited, and pretty much come down to:

  • If you’re lucky you might be able to connect to a test instance of the target service. SalesForce offers a sandbox instance for example to those with a production instance of SalesForce.
  • However sandbox/test instances are less likely for ‘in house’ solutions or products offered as an on premise solution unless there happens to be active development on the solution taking place.screenshot_48
  • Ideally a mocking tool is the route to go – but only 1 option in this space appears to be available for SOAP called mockable.io
  • Other than mockable you’re into using locally installed software and things get messy as it means getting the outbound web traffic routed to your own machine and then use something like MockServer (there is a great article about this tool by my book co-author Robert van Molken here). The chances are unless the network & security manager(s) are good friends or you like messing with your home network it isn’t going to happen.
  • The final option is instantiating an IaaS platform such as Amazon (AWS Free Developer intro scheme to keep your cost down) or perhaps Oracle IaaS, although I’d suggest this is a fairly expensive route to enable the testing of an integration, not to mention the effort to setup things to run the test.

With REST services things are somewhat easier, as there is a lot more tools geared to helping the design of APIs, testing them and critically providing a proxy based framework 65f3fc0eadfae8135439b4ff48f63fd4to enable monetisation. For example Apiary.io can create a test harness for you. Others such as Apigee, also offer such abilities. Apiary offers a trial account and we’ll be hearing a lot more about Apiary in the near future. There is a possible work around, which is to create test integrations that  map the SOAP content into a REST service (Apigee offers such a capability) but with certain constraints you could also do this within ICS itself. But we’ll look at such options within the book (can’t go without to money shot 😀 ).

This of course has only looked at the conventional use of SOAP, if you need to work with a SOAP interface that makes use of the more advanced WS-* extensions such as Reliable Messaging then things come pretty serious, and I’m afraid today you’re going to need to resort to development, and I suspect you’ll not escape that in the future either.

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Citizen Integrators – Excel for Integration?

10 Wednesday Jun 2015

Posted by mp3monster in General, Technology

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

bimodal, Boomi, Citizen Integrator, enterprise, Excel, Gartner, integration, iTunes, Jason Bloomberg, OIC - ICS, Oracle

Over the last year or so I have been looking a lot at technologies that Gartner and others have branded as ‘Citizen Integrators‘ – products such as Dell Boomi, and the recently launched Oracle Integration Cloud Service.  What I believe we are seeing is the appearance of a product family that in many respects will be to Integration what Excel has been to Finance systems.  This is to say that Finance Systems such as large ERPs tend to be changed slowly when it comes to introducing process changes, but users can get reports easily to extract data into their Excel spreadsheets.  We have the old joke that organisations finance can end up being run on Excel (http://www.wired.com/2014/03/many-spreadsheets-take-run-fortune-500-company/).

So don’t get me wrong,  I’m not saying these tool are evil and should be banned or the such like, as such thinking is utter folly.  I am looking at the quote much attributed to Spiderman (Stan Lee) but has been traced back to Voltaire:

With great power comes great responsibility

Why do I use this quote, well my experience (and that established by many others) is that with ease and agility comes a quick answer rather than a well thought out answer. That ease can be through cost (how many times have organisations discovered key systems solutions being run off someone’s desktop stuffed away in the corner of an office because they have been able to cheaply acquire the hardware and software get setup and then had viral adoption).

cityIt is therefore beholden on those of us that understand the challenges of integration should be seeking to help our ‘citizens’ appreciate (not lecture, brow beat etc) the implications and some intelligent governance to ensure systems are not accidentally ‘poisoned with unexpected data’ and you don’t fall foul of legal obligations.

The biggest challenge, is for SME’s to ensure that their colleagues within the IT organisation who face into the business organisation understand and promote the right thinking. After all, developers and architects alike, think like all drivers -that they’re at least above average if not good drivers – after all why would we be in the job?  But to set the average we can’t all be in that place (http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/motr/when-it-comes-to-driving-most-people-think-their-skills-are-above-average.html).

This of course also touches upon the arguments with Gartner’s bi-modal approach to IT, such as those presented by Jason Bloomberg. Personally I believe pace layering is right, but bi-modal thinking can create opportunities for things to be done badly – not an absolute certainty, but to work needs some strong hands trusted by organisational executives to steer successfully – something that  seems rather rare.

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