The focus for this series of blog articles is to explore the coupling
between SpringSource's Spring Integration framework and C24s Integration
Objects (iO) product. The primary driver for this showcase of two
technologies is to demonstrate a significant potential time-to-market
advantage for building, delivering and deploying Enterprise Data
Services solutions.
SpringSource's Spring Integration is a framework and extension of the de facto standard EIP patterns
described by Gregor Hohpe & Bobby Woolf [Enterprise Integration
Patterns, ISBN 0321200683, Addison-Wesley, 2004]. Spring Integration
also provides a veneer (via XML namespacesor Java code) over common Spring Core APIs and significantly, a messaging capability within and between applications.
C24 Integration Objects (iO)
is a high-performance integration tool that, through model
construction, supports Java binding capability and through
transformation construction, supports transformations between models.
C24 is a strategic SpringSource partner and well recognised in the
finance industry as a leading integration tool provider - due primarily
to the vast array of financial messaging models supported, low latency
processing and the graphical modelling capability of C24 iO Studio.
Furthermore, C24 iO models can be constructed as semantically rich
components in order to employ strict validation against customisable
rules that go far beyond capabilities of technologies such as the XML
Schema Definition (XSD) language constraint model.
Together with C24, SpringSource have built two custom
namespaces for C24's iO product that together, provide capability for a
closely-coupled integration between Spring, Spring Integration and iO.
The first namespace, c24-spring-core provides a facility to use C24 iO models directly within any Spring or Spring Integration application. The second namespace, c24-spring-integration, provides
a facility to use C24 iO models within Spring Integration flows. This
brings a time-to-market advantage for clients who wish to take advantage
of C24 iO and a robust integration framework - in many cases, very little custom Java code is necessary to get operational flows deployed.
The focus of the following series of articles is to
present key aspects of Spring Integration and C24 iO as
high-performance, key, integration technologies. Additionally, and
most significantly, an exploration will be undertaken of capabilities of
the two technologies (Spring & iO) coupled together in order to
deliver a client integration solution that forms the basis of a
financial application installation.
A single sample project is used through the series,
mainly to demonstrate code and configuration around a single business
theme. This sample project is based on an operational flow built to
process SWIFT FIN messages, all of the source code and configuration
will be made available in the set of references that will appear as the
last article in the series.
Part 1
in the series provides some background information regarding C24 iO as a
tool, it's core capabilities and relationship with the Spring
container.
Part 2 details the capabilities that have been provided by C24 iO for building integration flows and, through example, explores the use of C24 iO within those flows.
Part 3 demonstrates a typical Spring Integration based solution that uses C24 iO to provide binding-transform and transformation
capability. Because this flow is not contrived, it demonstrates many of
the issues that have to be tackled during design and implementation of
integration projects that use the Spring Integration framework.
Part 4 is all about testing integration flows. After having used Mockito
on several large projects to test Spring Integration flows, an
interesting testing strategy is presented.
Part 5 is a short post and is really a container for all of the
reference material used and a guide to the sample project available from
Github.
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