System and method for implementing a schema object model in application ...

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR IMPLEMENTING A SCHEMA OBJECT MODEL IN APPLICATION INTEGRATION

CLAIM OF PRIORITY

This application claims priority to U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 60/347,919, filed Oct. 18, 2001, entitled “APPLICATION VIEW,” as well as Application No. 60/347, 901, filed Oct. 18, 2001, entitled “EVENT ADAPTER,” each of wlnch is hereby incorporated herein by reference.

CROSS-REFERENCED CASES

The following applications are cross-referenced and incorporated herein by reference:

U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/271,194 entitled “APPLICATION VIEW COMPONENT FOR SYSTEM INTEGRATION,” by Mitch Upton, filed Oct. 15, 2002.

U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/271,162 entitled “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROVIDING A JAVA INTERFACE TO AN APPLICATION VIEW COMPONENT,” by Mitch Upton, filed Oct. 15, 2002.

U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/271,244 entitled “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR INVOKING BUSINESS FUNCTIONALITY FOR A WORKFLOW,” by Mitch Upton, filed Oct. 15, 2002.

U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/271,414 entitled “SYSTEMAND METHOD FOR USING WEB SERVICES WITH AN ENTERPRISE SYSTEM,” by Mitch Upton, filed Oct. 1 5, 2002.

U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/271,157 entitled “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR IMPLEMENTING AN EVENT ADAPTER,” by Mitch Upton, filed Oct. 15, 2002.

U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/271,156 entitled “SYSTEM AND METHOD USING A CONNECTOR ARCHITECTURE FOR APPLICATION INTEGRATION,” by Mitch Upton, filed Oct. 15, 2002.

U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/271,402 entitled “SYSTEM AND METHOD UTILIZING AN INTERFACE COMPONENT TO QUERY A DOCUMENT,” by Mitch Upton, filed Oct. 15, 2002.

U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/271,423 entitled “SYSTEM AND METHOD USING ASYNCHRONOUS MESSAGING FOR APPLICATION INTEGRATION,” by Mitch Upton, filed Oct. 15, 2002.

U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/271,423 entitled “SYSTEM AND METHOD USING ASYNCHRONOUS MESSAGING FOR APPLICATION INTEGRATION,” by Mitch Upton, filed Oct. 15, 2002.

U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/271,410 entitled “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR IMPLEMENTING A SERVICE ADAPTER,” by Mitch Upton, filed Oct. 15, 2002.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document of the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The invention relates generally to systems and methods for integrating applications.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

E-comrnerce has become a major driving factor in the new economy. To be successful in the long-term, e-comrnerce will require many companies to engage in cross-enterprise collaborations. To achieve cross-enterprise integration, a company must first integrate its internal applications. Using existing technology and tools, application integration can be an expensive proposition. No integration solution exists that is easy to use, affordable, and based on industry standards. Neither does a solution exist that is based on an industry standard infrastructure, has universal connectivity, is capable of massive scalability, and has accessible business process tools.

Application integration to this point has been very inwardfocused. Many existing integration systems have not focused on integrating applications between enterprises. Even when integration solutions were used for cross-enterprise integration, the solutions were still narrowly focused and aimed at vertical markets. This inward focus did little to help companies field external business-to-consumer and business-tobusiness applications, such as applications that can utilize the Internet to generate revenue and reduce costs. The requirement for Internet-enabled applications led to the rise of the application server market. To date, application servers have primarily been used to host external applications targeted at customers and partners. Application servers are themselves packaged applications that, instead of solving a specific problem, are general-purpose platforms that host vertical solutions.

The first attempts at application integration were primarily focused on low-level implementation details such as the format of the data, the byte ordering between machines, and character encoding. The focus on low-level data formats was necessary because, for the first generation of application integration solutions, there were no widely adopted standards for data encoding that could be deployed across multiple vertical applications.

The traditional approach involved connecting individual systems to, in effect, hardwire the systems together. This approach can be complex, as connecting different systems can require an intimate, low-level knowledge of the proprietary technologies of multiple systems.

Present integration systems, which have moved away from “hardwiring” systems together, still suffer from a lack of standards. Each integration vendor typically provides a proprietary solution for application integration, message transformation, message formats, message transport, and routing. Not one of these systems to date has achieved significant market share to enable its technologies to become the de-facto standard. This lack of standards has given packaged application vendors little incentive to integrate these systems with their. Further, each of these integration systems or servers has its own proprietary API, such that packaged application vendors cannot leverage development beyond a single integration server. This fragmentation of the integration market has provided little financial incentive for third parties.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

Systems and methods in accordance with embodiments of the present invention allow communication to be passed between components, such as an enterprise system and a client application, by taking advantage of schemas. A schema can be used to ensure that a communication, such as a request or response, is in the proper format for one of the components. For instance, metadata can be received from an enterprise