Integration – point-to-point versus centralized
Before digging into patterns and implementation techniques for application architecture, it's important to define that integration capabilities, as in making one application talk to another one, including different protocols and data formats, can be roughly split into two approaches:
- Point-to-point, where the integration capabilities are provided within each application component and components directly talk to each other
- Centralized, where a central integration layer plays a mediation role, hiding (partially or completely) the technological details of every component, hence facilitating the communication of components with each other
It's worth noticing that there is an important comparison to be made. We've already discussed, in Chapter 7, Exploring Middleware and Frameworks, that Java Enterprise Edition evolved into componentization with the goal of breaking monolithic approaches. This kind...
