This is the fourth blog in a series of 6 blogs about integration 2.0. Did you miss one blog, read the third blog Integration 2.0 Main Integration Concepts!

The Event and API hub are the central components in the integration landscape: In principle all communication will go through them. Besides loosely coupling EAC-s and processes it connects with other generic IT capabilities (functions) as well, like Master Data Management (MDM), Reference Data Management (RDM), Business Rule Management (BRM), Identity and Access Management (IAM) and Audit and Compliance Management. These all may provide functionality or data required by processes, EAC-s or each other. However, these services and EAC-s themselves are passive components other than publishing events that might be listened to by other components.

The following diagram shows the interactions between the Event and API hub and the other core elements mentioned above.

The API and Event hub both use and facilitate generic IT capabilities.

API Hub may for instance provide access to central business rules, and at the same time be a consumer of a rule in order to determine the routing of an API call.

The next blog will be online within a week!

Figure 12: Interactions between IT Capabilities and Integration Hubs

Enterprise Application Domains

An enterprise consists of multiple functional domains, like product development, production or sales. A domain may be supported by a single EAC or by multiple EAC-s that are related in terms of data or processes. EAC-s may be grouped in domains to make the landscape manageable. Each domain may have a separate Event- and API-hub on domain-level, that in their turn may be connected to an Event- and API-hub on Enterprise level.

Figure 13: Functional application domain

This approach hides specific domain-complexity from the rest of the company by only exposing API-s and Events that are interesting for processes over the domain. It provides the possibility to introduce a hierarchy that allows to manage certain aspects at local level. This reduces the overall complexity.