How do you integrate solution components and services across domains?

And one common mistake is to design statically. Over time, requirements change and evolve. Design should be flexible enough to accommodate changes. But also rigid enough to sustain issues coming from security and other types of threats.

Interoperability Standards: Adhere to interoperability standards, especially when dealing with components from different vendors or domains. This ensures seamless integration and reduces compatibility issues.

Elevate your integration game by sculpting a visionary scope and objectives. Think of it as composing a symphony; define your notes—the components—and set the tempo of seamless connectivity. Imagine your objectives as the conductor's baton, guiding harmony across diverse domains. This isn't mere integration; it's orchestrating a masterpiece where every note resonates purposefully. So, as you craft this musical journey of connections, let your composition inspire a collaborative performance that transcends the boundaries of domains and services, creating a symphony of unified excellence.

Event-Driven Architecture: Consider an event-driven architecture where components communicate through events. This can improve scalability and responsiveness in dynamic systems.

Scalability and Flexibility: Design integrations to be scalable and flexible, accommodating changes in workload and business requirements. Consider future-proofing your architecture. Continuous Improvement: Establish a feedback loop for continuous improvement. Regularly assess the performance of integrated components and seek opportunities to optimize and enhance the architecture.

Most of the time, the priorities for integration services are not considered. Quick and short-term solutions are often implemented without giving due attention to standardization and equal prioritization with other components in the application. Additionally, logging and automatic reconciliation are key considerations that are frequently overlooked.

1. Clearly define the scope of integration, including the components, services, and domains involved. 2. Identify the goals and objectives of integration, such as data sharing, functionality extension, or process automation. 3. Determine the communication protocols to be used for data exchange between domains. 4. Define the data that needs to be shared across domains. Map data fields and structures to ensure consistency. 5. Implement strong authentication and authorization mechanisms to ensure that only authorized users and components can access shared data and services.

The subsequent phase involves pinpointing the integration domains and components integral to the solution. Domains denote logical clusters of components sharing a common context, purpose, or technology—like business units, functional areas, data sources, or platforms. Components, conversely, stand as distinct functional units offering or utilizing services within domains or across them—such as applications, services, databases, or APIs. By recognizing these domains and components, one can chart the integration landscape, comprehending the interconnections and reliance among them. This mapping enhances understanding of the solution's structural framework, promoting effective integration design.

The above are good but Legacy is a key consideration in terms of constraints. Genuine green field development is rare as interoperability is necessary if not well understood. Design questions ought to inckude: what is the established interfaces, what limitations do they impose in terms of interoperability and what is the customer's definition of done in terms of a successful cross domain solution. What a Architect thinks is viable may not conform to what the customer expects - they are paying for it after all.

When identifying the components for the solution, it’s important to include cross-functional stakeholders help identify ancillary components that ensure the solution is auditable, compliant, supportable, etc. Forgetting this early on leads to surprise costs and bolted on components to fix these gaps.

Also consider logging and appropriate treatment of data sensitivity. A solution design should be produced which demonstrates fulfillment of all requirements.

Data Latency and Volume are the key when you are selecting the integration style and pattern, as well as where is the system of record and if it is Master or Transactional data.

Each integration style comes with prerequisites, e.g. a platform such as Kafka or a MQ for publish-subscribe. Getting such enablers in place will be a journey of its own, and that may push overall goal even further and increase costs. So consider also the readiness for each such patterns.

Using design patterns that are extremely loosely coupled and well distributed would make life easier. Reactive microservices and event-driven architecture at scale are indispensable.

Leverage middleware such as ETL and ESB tools and implement exception handling and error recovery. Apply the principle of least privilege to integration user while ensuring it has access to all the data it needs.

Stop to really consider the long-term needs for the solution and how scalable it needs to be. For systems that will logically grow over time, loosely coupled, distributed systems are going to make your life much easier as you grow. However, these are more complex and more expensive to maintain. It’s easy to get overexcited and over-complicate your solution.

Scope of monitoring can be especially complex in cross domain integrations. Consider below for examples - 1. When one or more of the integrated system/platform further integrates with another one - or a solution that is part of another integrated solution. Security, privacy and policies might require re-validation 2. Stakeholders list could increase exponentially over time. A graph a many to many interests or conflicts will increase exponentially as well (and so are the potential benefits if managed well) 3. One component solution compromised could pose risk to all connected systems if not governed and monitored well. It is like a mini internet. 4. Changes in policy and statutary needs require holistic review vs specific compliance check

Performance and the infrastructure Capacity sizing a great challenge when the integration solution spans different platforms. This needs to to be addressed early with clear definition of roles and responsibilities.

Once integrated, the single pane of glass monitoring / management platform is super important for those integrated solutions.

Security is a huge consideration for integration especially when data travels across multiple components - we’re seeing a significant increase in orchestrated integration or Service-Oriented-Architecture (SOA) as opposed to point-to-point integration, which often means data could be moving through 3 or more services. Business owners care deeply about how data is protected at rest and in transit so it is imperative that security is baked into your design.

Most importantly define the interface/contract between the domains and make it abundantly clear to the team that these are sacrosanct. Version the contracts so that it is possible to change without breaking the communication.

Documentation and Knowledge Sharing is important and need to have well-documented integration interfaces, contracts, and flow facilitate understanding, collaboration, and future maintenance

Ensure Data Consistency and Quality: Data integration is often a significant aspect of cross-domain integration. Ensure that data flowing between domains is consistent, accurate, and of high quality. Implement data validation, transformation, and cleansing processes as needed. Data governance practices are crucial for maintaining data integrity. Security and Compliance: Security is paramount when integrating across domains. Implement robust authentication, authorization, and encryption mechanisms to protect data and services. Compliance with industry standards and regulations (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA) is essential, and integration solutions should adhere to these requirements.

Documenting the rational of all the decision made throughout the designing of the solution will help throughout the life cycle of the solution. A well documentation of trade-offs being made is another aspects that is generally overlooked.