Enterprise Application Integration Initiative Launched

On March 19, 2007, the NIH Integration Service Center (ISC) announced the initial deployment of a hardware, software, and governance infrastructure that will support the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) technologies at the NIH. This deployment is the first of a multi-phased Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) initiative that will lead to reduced technology costs and better manageability for the NIH. The long-range goal of EAI is to address NIH integration issues through defined methodologies and policies.

What is the integration environment?

The ISC is responsible for the installation and maintenance of the NIH secure integration environment, which includes the TIBCO and Transaction Minder hardware and software environment. This integration environment allows application developers at NIH Institutes and Centers (ICs) to use shared enterprise services. Currently, there are 10 applications using the infrastructure Web services and several more in the planning stages. Members of the ISC have developed nearly all Web services currently available, but the second phase of the Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) initiative includes training NIH application developers on the TIBCO development software.

The second phase

As the second phase begins, the ISC will focus on SOA governance at the NIH. It will maintain and oversee a common catalog of sharable services, as well as a metadata repository for the NIH data schemas within these services. This will enable developers to use shared services and develop new services as well. The Integration Oversight Committee (IOC) will oversee SOA at NIH, and review the ISC progress on a monthly basis. The IOC members will also provide insight into IC’s interface requirements to NIH enterprise applications. The IOC is composed of the NIH CIO, NIH Chief IT Architect, members of the ISC and representatives from the NIH ICs.

Where to find more information

For more information on the ISC, visit the ISC Web site. This Web site describes the ISC in more detail and contains a link to the current infrastructure services. These infrastructure Web services include: extraction of NED data, extraction of changes to NED records and extraction of NIH Security Training data. The service catalog, accessible from the ISC homepage, describes all the available services.