1. Introduction
Open Source software (OSS) is an in-ternational phenomenon in terms of user adoption and development processes. Enterprise Information Integration (EII) is gaining significant credibility in the market as the most efficient approach to linking back-office data with line-of-business content. The Enterprise Integration using open source middleware provides an automated tool for Data Integration, Interoperability of data in a Distributed Environment. This Integration tool using open source middleware will realize reduced costs, Reduced Time, Sca-lability.
2. Open Source Application Servers & Mid-dleware
There is a wide variety of open source applications and middleware on the market, many of which support the Java Enterprise Edition framework. These include Apache Geronimo, Apache Struts, Apache Tomcat, Apache Web server, Easy Beans, JBoss, JFox, JOnAS, IBM WebSphere Community Edition (formerly Gluecode), Mono Project (supports .NET), OpenEJB, Resin, and Sun’s Glassfish.
2.1 JOnAS – a Java Application Server
JOnAS (Java Open Application Server) is an open source Java EE applica-tion server which has been released free of cost under the terms of the open source GNU General Public License. JOnAS is the most widely used open source J2EE 1.4 ap-plication server. Applications deployed on Java EE application servers are assemblies of components dealing with user presentation or business logic. Those two layers (presentation and logic) are composed of JSPs and Servlets for the first one and of different kinds of components (i.e., EJB for Enterprise Java Beans) for the second one. An EJB can be a Session Bean implementing application logic which converts and parse the XML data , an Entity Bean to simplify access to persistent data contained in databases, A Message Driven Bean that reifies a message queue polling (like JMS queues or topics) to be performed during the server runtime. These services are required in most enterprise applications. To access services, application component implementations are placed into containers. Those containers are used as the glue between components and technical services.
Fig 2.1 JOnAS Architecture
3. Enterprise Integration using JOnAS
The key feature of enterprise integration is data integration that automates the inter organizational business transactions without requiring replacement or major changes to companies existing source systems, thus avoiding an expensive and time-consuming activity. This paper aims at developing an automated tool for integrating the data from different sources thereby providing integration among the data and interoperability of data in a distributed envi-ronment. The Enterprise integration provides the following advantages
• Integration of data
• Unified view of relevant information
• Cost Effective because of open source
• Distributed access because of middle-ware
• Reduced time consuming since integrated and unified view
• Transparency
• Scalability
Fig 3.1 JOnAS with Client and DBServer
The above figure 3.1 shows how a client can communicate with a database server through JOnAS via EJB (Enterprise Java Bean).
4. Framework
The paper Enterprise integration using open source middleware can have client side and server side. In client side, it can have number clients. Client can access with the information stored in Excel or Access. A client can insert or delete or update any information stored in the data source. Clients can be provided with Excel or Access database where they can do updations. After updating the information, client has to save the updations. Then the defined macro in that Excel or Access data sheet can call the batch file automatically which in turn calls the server program. The client program gets the input file (Excel or Access) and passes the file name as an argument to the server program. Client machine can have either Excel or Access or both.
The server program gets the file path from the client and activates the code for converting Excel to XML data or Access to XML data depends on the input file. After converting them to the XML data the server side program then stores the XML file in the server. The server then parses these XML files and extracts the information and stores the data in to the tables stored in SQL Server.
Fig. 4.1 Frame work of Enterprise integration using JOnAS
The Fig 4.1 clearly depicts the workflow of information integration and various components involved in this project. The steps involved in Enterprise information integration is as follows:
1. The latest access data is converted to xml whenever a new record is inserted /updated on a real time basis.
2. The latest excel data is converted to xml whenever a new record is inserted /updated on a real time basis.
3. Implement these two modules in Enterprise java bean with JOnAS as application server.
4. Extract the information from all XML files by parsing and store the data into tables residing in SQL Server.
5. Generate Reports by getting information from the tables using frames and JTable.
5. Setting up the Environment
The first and foremost step in implementing the system is setting up the environment. The overall tasks involved in setting up the system are as follows:
• Installing JOnAS
The steps involved in installing JOnAS require J2SE SDK 1.4, ANT 1.6 and JOnAS. Install everything and start the JOnAS.
• Connecting JOnAS with NetBeans
The next step after installing the JOnAS application server is to connect the installed JOnAS with the working environment. NetBeans is the working environment. Requirements for connecting JOnAS with NetBeans are NetBeans 5.5, JOnAS/Tomcat 4.7.x or 4.8.x and JOnbAS
• Connect SQL Server with JOnAS
To allow access to one or more relational databases JOnAS will create and use DataSource objects. Such a DataSource object must be configured according to the database that will be used for the persistence of a bean. By default JOnAS contains HSQL as a default data server. SQL Server can be connected to JOnAS by using a plug-in called jtds. Before connecting the SQL Server we must upload three jar files into JO-NAS_4_8_4\lib\commons\jonas directory which gives access to SQL Server for JOnAS. Login to JOnAS admin console. Select new data source as Database. Give required infor-mation like driver name, URL etc., Click finish.
6. Implementation
This paper uses session bean for im-plementing the first two modules and entity bean for implementing the third module. The session bean converts Excel or Access data file to XML data file and fetches the data from the XML file by parsing it and after parsing, the session bean automatically calls entity bean which stores the extracted data in to SQL Server.
• ExcelToXML (File Excelfile, String file-name) – converts any Excel file to XML data file by getting Excel file as inputs. The procedure involved in converting Excel to XML data file is as follows:
• AccessToXML (String table, String connec-tion) – converts any Access DB to XML data file by getting table name and connection for JDBC connection as inputs.
The procedure for converting Acsess_to_XML and Excel_To_XML is shown below.
Fig 6.1 Procedure for XML conversion
The next step after converting the Microsoft Access or Excel file data to XML data is parsing the obtained XML files. By parsing the XML files, we can extract the data from the XML file and store it in an array which can then be used for storing it to an SQL Server. To manipulate a XML document, we need an XML parser. The parser loads the document into memory and once the document is loaded, its data can be manipulated using the DOM
• xml_parse_For_Excel (String xmlFile) – Parse the XML file obtained from Excel that suits for storing the latest XML data to SQL Server.
• xml_parse_For_Access (String xmlFile) -Parse the XML file obtained from Access that
The procedure for parsing XML files is same for both XML files obtained from Access or Excel. The steps involved in parsing the XML files are as follows.
Fig 6.1 Procedure for XML Parsing
Building and Deploying the Application
Now the enterprise application is ready to be deployed to the application server. There's no more configuration of deployment descriptors necessary. The IDE has already configured the deployment descriptors and prepared a new connection pool and data source for our enterprise application. Right Click the application on the left side window and Build the project. The output window shows errors if any. After correcting the errors deploy the project. Right-click the In-formation_Integration project and choose Run Project. The IDE does all of the following:
• Builds the enterprise application project and all of its subprojects (the Web module project and EJB module project).
• Starts the server if it is not already running.
• Undeploys the enterprise application if it is already deployed to the application server.
• Deploys the enterprise application to the application server.
fig 5.1 Information Integration deployed in JOnAS
Conclusion
Integration problems have been with the IT world since the advent of information systems. Today integration is required to directly support an organization's goals and needs. Enterprise integration using open source middleware provides an automated tool for information integration and also allows interoperability of data in a distributed environment. Thus this paper Enterprise integration using open source
Middleware provides an automated tool for information integration and thereby effects reduced cost and time, interoperability, scalability, persistency through open source middleware named JOnAS.
Future work can focus on developing an automated tool for integrating any number of input files from any sources and make it suitable for distributed environment.
References:
[1] Mabanza, N.; Chadwick, J.; Rao, G.S.V.R.K., "Performance evaluation of Open Source Native XML databases - A Case Study" Advanced Communication Technology, 2006. ICACT 2006. The 8th International Conference Volume 3, Issue , 20-22 Feb. 2006 Page(s): 1861 - 1865
[2] Ian Gorton2, Justin Almquist, Kevin Dorow1, Peng Gong3, Dave Thurman1, "An Architecture for Dynamic Data Source Integration", Proceedings of the 38th Ha-waii International Conference on System Sciences, IEEE Transaction, June 2005.
[3] Alain Boulze, Francois Letellier, Pascal Moussier," The ObjectWeb initiative, An Ex-ample of an open development process to promote a set of open source middleware technologies and bring them to main stream" , ObjectWeb Consortium, 2006.
[4] ObjectWeb Consortium , "Red Hat Application Server: JOnAS Tutorial ", 1999-2004
[5] Giovanni Guardalben, Shaku Atre, "Integrating XML and Relational Database Technol-ogies: A Position Paper" .
[6] Richard Monson-Hoeffel, "The Ultimate Guide J2EE web Services ", Pearson Educa-tion, 2002
[7] Heather Williamson," XML: The Complete Reference", Osborne/McGraw-Hill, 2001
James Edward Keogh, James Keogh, "J2EE: The Complete Reference", McGraw-Hill/Osborne, 2002
[8] JOnAS: Java (TM) Open Application Server, http://jonas.objectweb.org/
[9] JOnAS Platform Documentation, http://jonas.objectweb.org/doc/jonas-doc-en-jonas4.2.3.pdf
[10] http://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_syntax.asp
[12] http://JOnAS.objectweb.org/current/doc/howto/install_JOnAS.html
[13] http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=42251
[14] http://objectweb.org/JOnAS/2006-12/msg00027.html
[15] http://java.sun.com/developer/onlineTraining/Beans/EJBTutorial/
Open Source software (OSS) is an in-ternational phenomenon in terms of user adoption and development processes. Enterprise Information Integration (EII) is gaining significant credibility in the market as the most efficient approach to linking back-office data with line-of-business content. The Enterprise Integration using open source middleware provides an automated tool for Data Integration, Interoperability of data in a Distributed Environment. This Integration tool using open source middleware will realize reduced costs, Reduced Time, Sca-lability.
2. Open Source Application Servers & Mid-dleware
There is a wide variety of open source applications and middleware on the market, many of which support the Java Enterprise Edition framework. These include Apache Geronimo, Apache Struts, Apache Tomcat, Apache Web server, Easy Beans, JBoss, JFox, JOnAS, IBM WebSphere Community Edition (formerly Gluecode), Mono Project (supports .NET), OpenEJB, Resin, and Sun’s Glassfish.
2.1 JOnAS – a Java Application Server
JOnAS (Java Open Application Server) is an open source Java EE applica-tion server which has been released free of cost under the terms of the open source GNU General Public License. JOnAS is the most widely used open source J2EE 1.4 ap-plication server. Applications deployed on Java EE application servers are assemblies of components dealing with user presentation or business logic. Those two layers (presentation and logic) are composed of JSPs and Servlets for the first one and of different kinds of components (i.e., EJB for Enterprise Java Beans) for the second one. An EJB can be a Session Bean implementing application logic which converts and parse the XML data , an Entity Bean to simplify access to persistent data contained in databases, A Message Driven Bean that reifies a message queue polling (like JMS queues or topics) to be performed during the server runtime. These services are required in most enterprise applications. To access services, application component implementations are placed into containers. Those containers are used as the glue between components and technical services.
Fig 2.1 JOnAS Architecture
3. Enterprise Integration using JOnAS
The key feature of enterprise integration is data integration that automates the inter organizational business transactions without requiring replacement or major changes to companies existing source systems, thus avoiding an expensive and time-consuming activity. This paper aims at developing an automated tool for integrating the data from different sources thereby providing integration among the data and interoperability of data in a distributed envi-ronment. The Enterprise integration provides the following advantages
• Integration of data
• Unified view of relevant information
• Cost Effective because of open source
• Distributed access because of middle-ware
• Reduced time consuming since integrated and unified view
• Transparency
• Scalability
Fig 3.1 JOnAS with Client and DBServer
The above figure 3.1 shows how a client can communicate with a database server through JOnAS via EJB (Enterprise Java Bean).
4. Framework
The paper Enterprise integration using open source middleware can have client side and server side. In client side, it can have number clients. Client can access with the information stored in Excel or Access. A client can insert or delete or update any information stored in the data source. Clients can be provided with Excel or Access database where they can do updations. After updating the information, client has to save the updations. Then the defined macro in that Excel or Access data sheet can call the batch file automatically which in turn calls the server program. The client program gets the input file (Excel or Access) and passes the file name as an argument to the server program. Client machine can have either Excel or Access or both.
The server program gets the file path from the client and activates the code for converting Excel to XML data or Access to XML data depends on the input file. After converting them to the XML data the server side program then stores the XML file in the server. The server then parses these XML files and extracts the information and stores the data in to the tables stored in SQL Server.
Fig. 4.1 Frame work of Enterprise integration using JOnAS
The Fig 4.1 clearly depicts the workflow of information integration and various components involved in this project. The steps involved in Enterprise information integration is as follows:
1. The latest access data is converted to xml whenever a new record is inserted /updated on a real time basis.
2. The latest excel data is converted to xml whenever a new record is inserted /updated on a real time basis.
3. Implement these two modules in Enterprise java bean with JOnAS as application server.
4. Extract the information from all XML files by parsing and store the data into tables residing in SQL Server.
5. Generate Reports by getting information from the tables using frames and JTable.
5. Setting up the Environment
The first and foremost step in implementing the system is setting up the environment. The overall tasks involved in setting up the system are as follows:
• Installing JOnAS
The steps involved in installing JOnAS require J2SE SDK 1.4, ANT 1.6 and JOnAS. Install everything and start the JOnAS.
• Connecting JOnAS with NetBeans
The next step after installing the JOnAS application server is to connect the installed JOnAS with the working environment. NetBeans is the working environment. Requirements for connecting JOnAS with NetBeans are NetBeans 5.5, JOnAS/Tomcat 4.7.x or 4.8.x and JOnbAS
• Connect SQL Server with JOnAS
To allow access to one or more relational databases JOnAS will create and use DataSource objects. Such a DataSource object must be configured according to the database that will be used for the persistence of a bean. By default JOnAS contains HSQL as a default data server. SQL Server can be connected to JOnAS by using a plug-in called jtds. Before connecting the SQL Server we must upload three jar files into JO-NAS_4_8_4\lib\commons\jonas directory which gives access to SQL Server for JOnAS. Login to JOnAS admin console. Select new data source as Database. Give required infor-mation like driver name, URL etc., Click finish.
6. Implementation
This paper uses session bean for im-plementing the first two modules and entity bean for implementing the third module. The session bean converts Excel or Access data file to XML data file and fetches the data from the XML file by parsing it and after parsing, the session bean automatically calls entity bean which stores the extracted data in to SQL Server.
• ExcelToXML (File Excelfile, String file-name) – converts any Excel file to XML data file by getting Excel file as inputs. The procedure involved in converting Excel to XML data file is as follows:
• AccessToXML (String table, String connec-tion) – converts any Access DB to XML data file by getting table name and connection for JDBC connection as inputs.
The procedure for converting Acsess_to_XML and Excel_To_XML is shown below.
Fig 6.1 Procedure for XML conversion
The next step after converting the Microsoft Access or Excel file data to XML data is parsing the obtained XML files. By parsing the XML files, we can extract the data from the XML file and store it in an array which can then be used for storing it to an SQL Server. To manipulate a XML document, we need an XML parser. The parser loads the document into memory and once the document is loaded, its data can be manipulated using the DOM
• xml_parse_For_Excel (String xmlFile) – Parse the XML file obtained from Excel that suits for storing the latest XML data to SQL Server.
• xml_parse_For_Access (String xmlFile) -Parse the XML file obtained from Access that
The procedure for parsing XML files is same for both XML files obtained from Access or Excel. The steps involved in parsing the XML files are as follows.
Fig 6.1 Procedure for XML Parsing
Building and Deploying the Application
Now the enterprise application is ready to be deployed to the application server. There's no more configuration of deployment descriptors necessary. The IDE has already configured the deployment descriptors and prepared a new connection pool and data source for our enterprise application. Right Click the application on the left side window and Build the project. The output window shows errors if any. After correcting the errors deploy the project. Right-click the In-formation_Integration project and choose Run Project. The IDE does all of the following:
• Builds the enterprise application project and all of its subprojects (the Web module project and EJB module project).
• Starts the server if it is not already running.
• Undeploys the enterprise application if it is already deployed to the application server.
• Deploys the enterprise application to the application server.
fig 5.1 Information Integration deployed in JOnAS
Conclusion
Integration problems have been with the IT world since the advent of information systems. Today integration is required to directly support an organization's goals and needs. Enterprise integration using open source middleware provides an automated tool for information integration and also allows interoperability of data in a distributed environment. Thus this paper Enterprise integration using open source
Middleware provides an automated tool for information integration and thereby effects reduced cost and time, interoperability, scalability, persistency through open source middleware named JOnAS.
Future work can focus on developing an automated tool for integrating any number of input files from any sources and make it suitable for distributed environment.
References:
[1] Mabanza, N.; Chadwick, J.; Rao, G.S.V.R.K., "Performance evaluation of Open Source Native XML databases - A Case Study" Advanced Communication Technology, 2006. ICACT 2006. The 8th International Conference Volume 3, Issue , 20-22 Feb. 2006 Page(s): 1861 - 1865
[2] Ian Gorton2, Justin Almquist, Kevin Dorow1, Peng Gong3, Dave Thurman1, "An Architecture for Dynamic Data Source Integration", Proceedings of the 38th Ha-waii International Conference on System Sciences, IEEE Transaction, June 2005.
[3] Alain Boulze, Francois Letellier, Pascal Moussier," The ObjectWeb initiative, An Ex-ample of an open development process to promote a set of open source middleware technologies and bring them to main stream" , ObjectWeb Consortium, 2006.
[4] ObjectWeb Consortium , "Red Hat Application Server: JOnAS Tutorial ", 1999-2004
[5] Giovanni Guardalben, Shaku Atre, "Integrating XML and Relational Database Technol-ogies: A Position Paper" .
[6] Richard Monson-Hoeffel, "The Ultimate Guide J2EE web Services ", Pearson Educa-tion, 2002
[7] Heather Williamson," XML: The Complete Reference", Osborne/McGraw-Hill, 2001
James Edward Keogh, James Keogh, "J2EE: The Complete Reference", McGraw-Hill/Osborne, 2002
[8] JOnAS: Java (TM) Open Application Server, http://jonas.objectweb.org/
[9] JOnAS Platform Documentation, http://jonas.objectweb.org/doc/jonas-doc-en-jonas4.2.3.pdf
[10] http://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_syntax.asp
[12] http://JOnAS.objectweb.org/current/doc/howto/install_JOnAS.html
[13] http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=42251
[14] http://objectweb.org/JOnAS/2006-12/msg00027.html
[15] http://java.sun.com/developer/onlineTraining/Beans/EJBTutorial/
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