Designing, Building and Deploying Messaging Solutions (Hardcover)

Enterprise integration goes beyond creating a single application with a distributed n-tier architecture, which enables a single application to be distributed across several computers. Whereas one tier in a distributed application cannot run by itself, integrated applications are independent programs that can each run by themselves, yet that function by coordinating with each other in a loosely coupled way. Messaging enables multiple applications to exchange data or commands across the network using a "send and forget" approach. This allows the caller to send the information and immediately go on to other work while the information is transmitted by the messaging system. Optionally, the caller can later be notified of the result through a callback. Asynchronous calls and callbacks can make a design more complex than a synchronous approach, but an asynchronous call can be retried until it succeeds, which makes the communication much more reliable. Asynchronous messaging also enables several other advantages, such as throttling of requests and load balancing.