Overview: Siebel Enterprise Application Integration > Understanding Integration Paradigms >

About Usage Models

When looking at your requirements, you should understand how you intend to use Siebel EAI's integration capabilities. You need to determine how the integration will behave and under what circumstances. In other words, in what way are you planning to use this integration? This is referred to as the usage model.

As shown in Figure 9, there are two basic usage models, real-time and batch. Batch mode has a single mode, and real-time has two modes, either tightly-coupled or loosely-coupled. To help you determine the appropriate usage model, ask yourself the following questions:

• How do I plan to integrate Siebel applications with other applications?
• Do I want to integrate in real-time or in batch mode?
• If I want to integrate in real-time, do I want the solution to be tightly-coupled or loosely-coupled?

Figure 9. Integration Usage Model