Re: How do I design a Data Architecture ?

In article <954ht7$c55$1_at_nnrp1.deja.com>,   bdimple_at_my-deja.com wrote:
> Hi,
> I have been asked to propose a Data Architecture for
> my company.
>
> We are moving into E-Commerce.
>
> This requires integrating our existing legacy systems,
> and linking to external systems for CRM and maybe
> Order fulfilment.
>
> It seems like an enormous task.
>
> Where do I start, and how can I estimate the time
> required, and how can I convince my management that
> this is a major undertaking ?
>
> I'd appreciate any and all advice, especially some
> real-life suggestions of what to do and maybe what
> NOT to do.
>
Before I can say something really useful, it's interesting to know what industry your company is in, what enterprise software you are using. If you are not in "vertical markets", for example, in theory, you are just fine buying PeopleSoft, or Oracle Apps, and trashing the rest of enterprise seftware:-). Seriously, even though those particular examples are far from perfect implementations, they are something like *standard* enterprise data architecture.

If you want to integrate existing systems, your typical problem would be "how do I synchronize customer data in systems A and B?" One of the solutions on the market is establishing message flow from one system to the other, possibly, even both ways. Don't be misleaded by marketing: establishing message flow itself is trivial part of this venture. Often, you'll have to write adapter code on both systems, and worry about such things as data mapping, exceptions, transaction integrity, etc. I found that if you are able to write such adaptor code yourself, you don't really need messaging architecture.

In short, integration is exteremely tough. Even in all-in-one approach, it is hard for the different application teams working on the same database schema to agree upon semantics of the single database column! What kind of communication, then, could you expect for the products from different vendors? Good luck.

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http://www.deja.com/ Received on Wed Jan 31 2001 - 00:11:44 CET