Applying Model-Integrated Computing to Middleware and Application Components

Enterprise application is a term applied to a large class of applications that comprise enterprise resource planning (ERP), shop floor automation, supply chain management (SCM), ebusiness and customer relationship management (CRM) systems. Examples of enterprise applications include airline reservation systems, bank asset management systems, and businessto-business supply chain management systems. These types of applications constitute the majority of information technology (IT) investment and staffing, with annual expenditures expected to exceed $7.3bn worldwide by 2004. Enterprise applications were historically developed using custom built, in-house applications built customizing proprietary systems like HighExPlus, BancsConnect and EX that are being used from mainframes to PC’s. Due to deregulation, time-to-market pressures, and stiff global competition for human and economic resources, however, enterprise applications are increasingly being developed using services and protocols defined by commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) middleware integration platforms, such as the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) [1], Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) [2], and emerging web services middleware, such as .NET [3] based on XML [4] and SOAP [5]. COTS middleware encapsulates specific services or sets of services to provide reusable building blocks that can be composed to develop enterprise applications rapidly and robustly. In particular, COTS middleware offers enterprise application developers the following reusable capabilities: