Integrating Information Systems Using Web Oriented Integration Architecture and RESTful Web Services

This paper proposes a method for the semantic integration of information systems that aims at shifting the main focus of the integration efforts, which is typically placed on software development, in the direction of business modeling with the goal of reducing the necessary code development and maintenance efforts. Proposed approach follows the principles of Web 2.0, which strongly promote the simplest, most open and best scaling software development approaches. For this purpose it employs the Web Oriented Integration Architecture (WOIA) which extends the concept of Web Oriented Architecture (WOA) that in recent years has been gaining attention as an alternative to traditional SOA. The WOIA allows information consumers to access information system resources regardless of their representations and interfaces of particular information systems, as well as without knowing where the required resources are located. The necessary functionality is delivered by the WOIA middleware which provides web service registration, discovery, composition and execution capabilities.