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Rating: 
Summary: Extremely Good Coverage of Enterprise App. Integration
Review: I read this book (it should not be called a module, it is a complete book!) after going through many books and articles on enterprise integration. For the money, this is the best treatment of business issues, strategic choices, and enabling technologies for EAI. Umar starts with a very good discussion of various integration strategies and the tradeoffs. Approaches to deal with legacy applications are clearly spelled out including access in place, data warehouses, and m igration (gradual/cold turkey). Then a very solid discussion of EAI platforms is presented with a spotlight on XML, Web services, message brokers, screen scrapers, and all that. I really like the categorization of EAI-lite, EAI-mid, and EAI-heavy to emphasize that not all integrations are multi-million, multi-year projects. The role of data warehouses in integrations and when/how to migrate is also covered quite well. The examples and case studies in the last chapter to summarize state of the practice, market, and art is quite beneficial. Umar is a good writer who has a good practical as well as theoretical knowledge of the subject matter (a rarity). In this and other modules of this handbook, he always starts with a conceptual framework and then explains different pieces of the framework through examples, commercial products, and relevant research findings. His focus is practical but he discusses the underlying principles and foundations quite well so that the material is useful for university/industrial courses. Large sources of additional materials and Web links further add to the academic value. Although this module is self sufficient, it should be combined with architecture and middleware modules of the handbook due to their affinity to the subject matter. It is a very worthwhile study.
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