If you've been following my writings for the last several years you'll know that this is the third book on application integration, and perhaps the most significant. We need a new book for a few reasons:

First, the arrival of a new service-oriented technology standard, web services. As we move further into the world of application integration, we're finding that application service-based approaches make sense for many problem domains. I've stated that in both previous books. Now with the advent of a new service-based approach, web services, we now have another opportunity to put that into perspective. I'll talk about web services and how they related to application integration, albeit this is not a book about web services, just the proper application of web services in application integration problem domain.

Second, there is a need to take application integration to the next level. The first book on application integration, Enterprise Application Integration, the first of its kind, covered the basic concepts of allowing two or more business systems to share processes and data. That book was written for the rank beginner since EAI, at least the notion and buzzword, was new. The next book, B2B Application Integration: eBusiness-Enable Your Enterprise, really extended the concepts put forth in the first book to the inter-enterprise problem domain, which reuses many of the same approaches and technologies, but does require knowledge of old and new B2B standards and technologies including XML, EDI, RosssetaNet, BizTalk, ebXML, etc.

This book is all about looking at advanced application integration concepts, approaches, and technologies, with many topics typically not covered in the previous books or any other books for that matter. We'll be looking at how to approach very complex and challenging application integration problem domains, and leverage forward-looking concepts and technology, including how to understand your problem domain, determine your requirements, create a logical application integration architecture, and most importantly, backing the correct grouping of application integration technologies into your solution to create an infrastructure that is strategic to the success of your organization.