Modeling EAI-based e-business solutions

With increasing Internet use, the selling and buying of goods and services on the Web, commonly considered as a part of e-commerce, is exploding at an unbelievably rapid speed. The success of e-commerce depends a lot on the effort of a contributing domain called e-business that is typically unseen and unconcerned with Web consumers/Web customers, and that is now becoming the focus of every company and its business partners, large and small. The e-commerce therefore is just the tip of the iceberg. Underneath is a huge supporting infrastructure involving the bridging and integration of disparate applications. These applications, old and new, are written in different computer languages and compiled in different platforms, run on different hardware, have different data structures, types and formats, use different transport mechanisms, and support a wide range of different technologies. Consequently, many tools have been introduced in the market over the years to provide rapid development and delivery of integrated applications supporting e-business. While these EAI-enabled applications, pre-packaged software and tools in support of EAI in particular and e-business in general have grown at a highly accelerating rate, methods and techniques for effective and rapid development of EAI and EAI-enabled applications have received a lesser degree of attention. The article discusses an EAI based modeling scheme of e-business solutions for and across enterprises. As a case in point, we use a product suite, namely CandleNet eBusiness Platform by Candle Corporation, to exemplify our modeling scheme.