Integration Broker Suites (IBS) Brick

An integration broker is a third-party intermediary that facilitates interactions among application systems. By definition, the broker itself provides two primary value-added application-layer functions:

• Transformation - translates message or file contents, including both syntactic "conversion" and some degree of (greater or lesser) semantic "transformation."  
• Routing (flow control) - some form of smart addressing, such as content-based routing and/or publish-and-subscribe. Note that intelligent routing is stateless.

To enable these services, a broker has some form of repository that holds metadata descriptions of the input and output message formats (i.e., a message dictionary), and the transformation and routing rules. It will also have some administration and monitoring facilities to manage the broker configuration, and may also offer application-specific or technical adapters, along with some related development tools, gateways and templates for connecting to packaged applications. An integration broker may optionally also support a message warehouse (a mechanism to store and retrieve copies of messages).

Integration broker suites (IBSs) are broker products with added features such as Business Process Management (BPM), adapters, adapter development toolkits, Web services, communication tools, and better metadata and management facilities.

IBSs reduce the time to implement systematic application development projects that have demanding integration requirements. They improve business processes by making a broader and deeper range of integration practical across heterogeneous application systems. More than 75 percent of large enterprises use a broker somewhere, but only 10 percent of integration projects in 2002 used a broker.

• Caredata Engine has been designated Retirement. This product does not provide as much functionality, value, or Total Cost of Ownership as the selected Tactical and Strategic products. Caredata Engine is also considered retirement due to the new CRIS architecture.
• QDX Integrator is specialized for HL7. Non-medical/non-scientific applications should use TIBCO Business Works.
• The eRA project is using Hermes as a “B2B Exchange” broker.
• Tactical and strategic products were selected to leverage NIH's investment in products that are a proven fit for NIH's known future needs. Leveraging baseline products in the future will minimize the operations, maintenance, support and training costs of new products. 
• In 2005, CIT conducted a formal evaluation and selected TIBCO BusinessWorks as the preferred NIH IBS standard.
• Some baseline products have been designated retirement and containment. These products are either not as widely or successfully deployed at NIH, or they do not provide as much functionality, value, or Total Cost of Ownership as the selected tactical and strategic products.