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Integration dictionary

Each industry has its own terminology and "buzzwords". Below is a list of the most common terms used in integration and e-commerce, we hope you find it useful!

  • Third-party logistics (3PL) providers typically specialize in integrated operation of warehousing and transportation services that can be scaled and adapted to customer needs, based on market conditions, to meet the demands and delivery service requirements of their products. Services often extend beyond logistics and include value-added services related to the production or procurement of goods, such as services that integrate parts of the supply chain.

  • Accelerator is a generic name used to describe packaged functionality facilitating the creation of an Adapter. An Accelerator may consist of one or many building blocks. The building blocks may be Scripts, Adapterflows or Workflows.

  • An application that provides an interface between business and enterprise management systems and a central integration platform, or towards other applications. Adapters are important SOA components. Intelligent Adapters can promote high-level composite services.

  • An API (Application Programming Interface) is a set of classes, interfaces, functions, structures, and other programming elements that software developers use to write programs that interact with a product, technology, or operating system. API management involves publishing, promoting and monitoring APIs in a secure environment. It also includes the creation of end-user resources that define and document the API. The goal of API management is to allow an organization that publishes an API to monitor the lifecycle of the interface and ensure that the needs of developers and applications that use APIs are met.

  • Business Intelligence, BI, is a generic term for systems, applications and technology that manage business information. The aim is to help companies in the decision-making process. BI applications can collect, store, integrate, analyze and present different types of business information. Building BI is a very common integration project.

  • The processes of combining different business and management systems so that they can interact with each other and thus be used to improve a company's business strategy. Business integration makes business processes smarter and more cost-effective.

  • The formal codification of business policies and actions into prescriptive operating practices that are separated from and maintained independently of application code.

  • Composable business can be compared to Lego blocks that can be arranged and put together and, if necessary, rearranged and removed as needed. It enables companies to remove legacy applications and switch to clear components that can be designed, scaled and maintained independently of each other. Composable businesses can react quickly to changes in the market by assembling and disassembling various components.

  • Customer Relationship Management, CRM, is a generic term for methods and software used by a company to manage customer relationships in a structured way. This often means building databases of information that can be easily accessed by salespeople, business management or others focused on creating and maintaining a good relationship with customers.

  • Enterprise Architecture, EA, is the integration architecture for IT infrastructure and business processes of a company. EA is based on the requirements of the company's operations. SOA and EA are closely related concepts.

  • Enterprise Application Integration, EAI, describes the process of integrating different computer systems with each other so that information can be automatically exchanged between them. The EAI concept is based on loosely coupled systems. With integrated systems, there is no need for manual control when updating one system with information from another - regardless of their different configuration and format. When integrating systems, the goal is to share and reuse as much as possible from the different systems to avoid isolated point-to-point connections.

  • Business conducted electronically using an automated information system on the Internet. E-commerce is the buying and selling of goods on the Internet and is essentially a subset of a broader e-business strategy. The e-business strategy usually covers the entire business chain, from electronic orders and invoices to automatic updating of internal systems (ERP, CRM, purchasing, financial systems, etc.). It also includes the provision of customer service and cooperation with partners via the Internet. EDI is a type of e-commerce.

  • The e-commerce platform enables a business to create an online store with features such as product catalog, shopping cart, checkout, payment processing, and much more. It also enables the company to manage inventory, track sales and administer customer information. The e-commerce platform can be either a proprietary software or a third-party platform such as Shopify, WooCommerce, or Magento.

  • Electronic Data Interchange, EDI, is an established standard for the exchange of electronic documents between companies. It is a generic term that covers the use of all types of messaging standards.

  • Electronic Data Interchange for Administration, Commerce and Transport is the United Nations International Standard for Electronic Data Interchange (UN/EDIFACT). The standard specifies the syntax rules for structuring data to be sent electronically. The standard is suitable for large message content, as an EDIFACT message is much smaller than, for example, an XML message with the same content.

  • An enterprise system, or ERP in English, is software that helps companies manage their various business processes in an integrated way. This typically includes functions such as finance, inventory, purchasing, production, sales and HR. The ERP system collects data from different parts of the company and presents them in a unified way, which provides an overall picture of the company's performance and enables more effective decisions.

  • The Internet of Things (IoT) is the network of physical objects (devices, vehicles, buildings and other objects) that are embedded with electronics, software, sensors and network connectivity, enabling these objects to collect and exchange data. The Internet of Things allows objects to be sensed and remotely controlled over existing network infrastructure, creating opportunities for more direct integration between the physical world and computer-based systems, resulting in improved efficiency, accuracy and economic benefits.

  • Integration Platform as a Service, iPaaS, is an integration platform that runs in the cloud and is available as a service.

  • Legacy systems are systems that are based on technologies, languages and platforms that are older than those currently in use. It is often difficult to access these systems from more modern applications. In many companies, legacy systems are business critical and migrating to a more modern system would be a costly and difficult procedure. Business integration and / or adapters provide the opportunity to solve the problem of accessing the information in older systems without having to migrate to a more modern environment.

  • Loose coupling is a way of connecting components in an IT infrastructure so that they depend on each other as little as possible. Loose couplings are useful when there are changes in one or more of the components / systems. With loose coupling, the risk of a change in one system affecting another is reduced.

  • Master data is a data source for the original data, where the maintenance of the data takes place. Master is usually a device (or process) that controls one or more other devices (or processes).

  • The automated arrangement, coordination, execution and management of complex computer programs, systems, integration and services.

  • Product Information Management, PIM, means managing the information required to market and sell products via distribution channels. A central set of product data can be used to feed information to media such as websites, print catalogs, ERP systems and electronic data feeds to trading partners.

  • Point-of-Sales (PoS) systems are software used to manage real-time sales transactions at a physical store. It is used at checkout to complete a sales transaction by scanning products, adding discounts, processing payments, and printing receipts. The PoS system can also help manage inventory, track sales, and provide sales and cash balance reports.

  • A process is a series of actions or operations that transform a set of inputs into predefined outputs. If computerized, the process is often an instance of a program that performs a task. It can contain a set of activities, data and associated information.

  • The activity of making changes and adjustments to a process to improve its effectiveness or efficiency.

  • The individual who has responsibility for process performance and resources and who provides support, resources and functional expertise to projects. The process owner is responsible for implementing process improvements.

  • Common architectural integration pattern. In a publish/subscribe pattern, the sender program sends an event, such as a changed order number, without knowing who will receive it. Recipients subscribe to events from the sender program. The event is sent to an input channel, which is then split into a number of output channels that go to the subscribers.

  • Representational State Transfer, or REST, is an architectural style and method of communication often used in the development of web services. The use of REST is often preferred over the heavier Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) style because REST does not require as much bandwidth, making it better suited for use over the Internet. REST's decoupled architecture and easier communication between producer and consumer make REST a popular style for cloud-based APIs, such as those provided by Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

  • Return on Investment, ROI, is a performance measure used to evaluate the effectiveness of an investment. Basically, it is the profit or loss made on an investment compared to the amount of money invested.

  • Software as a Service (SaaS) is a way of making software available to customers over the Internet as an on-demand service. Applications are typically hosted on a web server or uploaded to a customer device. When the contract expires, the service is disabled. SaaS is used for many business activities, such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM), invoicing and service desk management.

  • Supply Chain Management (SCM) is the coordination of product, information and financial flows between supplier, manufacturer, wholesaler, retailer and customer. Many companies use web-based applications as part of the SCM solution, making it an essential part of the integration as well as e-business strategy.

  • Extensible Mark-up Language, XML, is a specification that describes how a text is structured, designed or formatted. It is a markup language that uses tags to identify different types of information. XML is an open standard that allows the user to define their own elements. Formal recommendations on grammar and parsing are provided by the W3C.

  • The World Wide Web Consortium, W3C, is an international standards organization for the World Wide Web, WWW. The W3C develops standards for the WWW. Examples of these standards are: HTML, XML, SOAP.

  • Web services (or application services) are APIs or Web APIs that can be accessed by other applications over the Internet and run on a remote system that hosts the requested services. Data is sent between the applications using HTTP. Application interfaces are described in XML. A web service is often used for the exchange of company information, for sample orders or price quotations.

  • An orchestrated and repeatable pattern of business activities, made possible by the systematic organization of resources into processes that transform materials, provide services, or process information.

  • Websphere Message Queuing, WSMQ, is a network communication software developed by IBM that allows messaging across platforms (Windows, Linux, IBM mainframe and midrange, and Unix). Messages can be sent between applications running at different times. A queue manager will hold the message until it can be delivered.