Skip to content

Integration Definitions

This is about providing a common language to describe integrations

External Integration

External integration is where data is exchanged with applications / users which are not in the 'Trusted Zone'. We define this as B2B:

  • B2B - Business to Business connectivity – for example, exchanging data with suppliers or financial institutions

Internal Integration

Internal Integration is where information is exchanged between applications / users within the ‘Trusted Zone’. This includes applications located in cloud hosted area and applications internally. Internal Integration can be broadly broken into three groups as follows:

  • H2H - Hosted to Hosted connectivity - that is connectivity to organisational applications hosted by third party providers on infrastructure that is outside of the organisations environment – for example, cloud hosted Enterprise Resource Management (ERP) to cloud hosted LIMS
  • H2P - Hosted to On-Premise connectivity - that is connectivity between organisational applications hosted on cloud exchanging data with applications hosted internally.
  • S2S - System to System connectivity - that is connectivity between applications hosted internally.

H2H Integration

Organisations tend to invest in applications from third party vendors to fulfil their business needs. Many of these solutions are now ‘Software as a Service’ (SaaS) solutions which are hosted in environments outside of the main organisational datacentres. There are requirements for these solutions to exchange information as well and the integration patterns detailed in this guide apply equally to those integration requirements.

The physical implementation of these, however, is expected to use organisational integration capabilities to meet their integration needs with the following potential exceptions;

  • If the integration requirement is between applications located in the same cloud environment or to exchange data between modules of the same product suite in the same cloud environment, a vendor may use their own integration platform if they have one.
  • If the integration requirement is between a module of the solution and a third party such as a Payroll component sending payment details to a bank, the vendor may use their own method of integration as long as all of organisational’s service level expectations are met.

It is, however, important to stress that all interfaces and services, between internal systems, external systems, or cloud hosted to cloud hosted systems MUST be catalogued and the catalogue maintained.

H2P / S2S Integration

The Integration Hub is a Cloud Hosted Integration platform. It can be used to exchange data between Cloud Hosted applications and applications hosted internally. The platform has been designed to securely connect with applications hosted internally. It can also be used to support secure exchange of data between systems implemented on premise as well.

For internal integration, these can be broadly broken into four styles as follows:

  • ESB – The Enterprise Service Bus; used for processing small sets of data that are required frequently or in real time between applications. The ESB can also be used to abstract and loosely couple services from the data applications.
  • SOA – Service Oriented Integration; typically used for returning information needed immediately in order to facilitate a process. By their nature, services are designed to facilitate real time requirements.
  • DATA – Data Integration; used for processing large sets of data that are required infrequently.
  • FILE – moving data in files; used to facilitate requirements where applications can only take data in a specific file format. Typically, this is used to integrate with legacy applications which are not easy to modify and must only be used as a last resort if none of the other styles of integration are possible.

The first two groups (ESB and SOA) are suited for implementing real time data requirements – that is where changes to information must be understood and distributed immediately to avoid business issues. The latter two groups are more suited for implementing batch type requirements - that is where changes to information must be made available in time for periodic process steps being initiated. The Integration Hub is designed to support both of these styles of integration.

As yet, no specific solution has been implemented to support DATA integration and the newly designed File Transfer service can be used for FILE

Using integration patterns help to simplify and standardise the way applications exchange data.