Customer Order Tracking System (COTS) Sample Application

The J2EE™ Connector Architecture and Enterprise Application Integration Customer Order Tracking System (COTS) is a sample application that manages customers, orders and products.

This section contains the following topics:

• Overview
• Multi-Tier Application

Overview

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This sample demonstrates the capabilities of the Sun™ ONE Studio and the Connector Builder for developing the resource adapter for a specific EIS interface, and the capabilities of the Sun ONE Application Server based integration with existing enterprise applications and EIS.

This sample application includes:

• A stubbed Enterprise Information System (EIS).
• A resource adapter.
• A Web application.

A diagram of the COTS Sample Architecture Overview is shown in the figure below.

   COTS Sample Architecture Overview

Multi-Tier Application

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The sample architecture is illustrated in the figure above as a multi-tier application and a tool set.

The multi-tier application consists of:

• An EIS Tier (custom EIS server).
• A Middle Tier (Application Server).
• A Client Tier (Web Browser, JVM).

In the tool set, the Sun ONE Connector Builder is plugged into the Sun ONE Studio as a module. The integration and interaction in the sample system are described below.

EIS Tier

The EIS tier contains the system running the existing custom enterprise application for tracking the customer orders of the products. The EIS vendor uses the Sun ONE Studio in conjunction with the Sun ONE Connector Builder as a comprehensive tool and framework to create a resource adapter. A resource adapter is a system library that is specific to the EIS, and designed to provide connectivity to the EIS. The created resource adapter is J2EE Connector Architecture 1.0 specification compliant, and has the capability to plug in to any application server that supports the J2EE Connector architecture.

Middle Tier

The middle tier, the Sun ONE Application Server, implements business logic as a Web application (JSP/Servlets) in its container and utilizes the connector to access EIS. The resource adapter is plugged into the connector module of the Application Server and interacts with EIS through the EIS specific interface. The Web application deployed in Application Server interacts the resource adapter via Common Client Interface (CCI) or Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) Interface.

Client Tier

The client tier is composed of different types of client applications (for example, a Web browser client, or a JVM client). The clients provides user interface to track the customer orders of products through HTTP connection to the Application Server.

The design and implementation of the sample is kept simple to provide easy to understand steps to build connectors.

This sample helps you to adapt the approach for building a resource adapter to suit your legacy application.