Administering PeopleSoft Integration Broker

Planning the Integration Architecture

The two major components of PeopleSoft Integration Broker are the integration gateway and the integration engine. The integration gateway is a platform that manages the receipt and delivery of messages passed among systems through PeopleSoft Integration Broker. The integration engine is an application server process that routes messages to and from PeopleSoft applications as well as transform the structure of messages and translates data according to specifications that you define.

Evaluate historical integration data, current data, as well as expected growth and increased traffic. Consider how many interfaces you have in production and how much system resources they use. Also consider how many of these interfaces will remain nightly batch file loads versus how many do you want to be real-time service based integrations. Devise simulated real-life integration scenarios where you can estimate volume and size of the transactions to a certain degree. Then use this information for benchmarking and stress testing, which should lead to performance tuning, hardware sizing, and so on.

Understanding Integrations Processed by the Integration System

Work with development teams to understand the type, number and frequency of integration that will be processed on the system. Doing so will assist you in setting up and configuring components properly, as well as in performance tuning the system.

Consider the following:

• Real-time integrations or scheduled integrations.

• Determine if your business needs require using real-time integration, scheduled integrations, or a combination of both. Scheduled batch processing and file loads of scheduled integration may impact system performance and the running of other system applications.

• Inventory the integration being developed and performed.

• Determine which systems and applications will participate in each integration. Consider dependencies on other systems owned by other groups having concurrent releases, and data dependencies within the context of synchronizing data between systems. Do you need permission from business owners to integrate with their systems?

• Synchronous integrations and asynchronous integrations.

  In PeopleSoft Integration Broker synchronous integrations, all processing stops after the system sends a request to an integration partner, until a response is received back from that partner. In PeopleSoft Integration Broker asynchronous integrations, each request is placed in a queue to be processed as soon as the system can accommodate the request.

  Synchronous integration processing and asynchronous integration processing each place different loads on the integration system. Understanding the processing that takes place on your system can help you better tune the system for optimal performance.

Determining Security

Unlike a public web service on the internet that retrieves a stock quote for a given ticker symbol, the web services and integrations in your PeopleSoft applications can expose sensitive information such as financial data. PeopleSoft Integration Broker facilitates transfer of information between systems; however, a security analyst must evaluate security requirements for each individual integration.

For example, security requirements might differ when interfacing with credit card processing vendors, versus publishing salary information out of human resources, versus synchronizing business units between applications, and so on. Perhaps certain information should be available to the public, including systems outside of your company, such as how many inventory items are available for sale. Other information might be restricted to internal employees only, internal application systems only, or perhaps only certain users of a particular application system.

PeopleSoft Integration Broker allows you to secure each individual integration to the level of security required as well as all integration data flowing over the wire.

Accessing Staff Skills

Administrators of PeopleSoft Integration Broker should have familiarity, training or experience in the following areas:

• PeopleTools.

• Web server administration.

• Application server administration.

• Performance testing and tuning knowledge.