A company is building a new customer self-service website. The company has an existing CRM
application that contains customer information that needs to be integrated into the self-service
website. The CRM application provides a synchronous interface to access the needed customer
information. The CRM application takes 5 to 30 seconds to respond to the request for customer
information. The requirements for the new customer self-service website is to respond within 3
seconds 90% of the time. What integration pattern would you suggest that the company use to
integrate the CRM application into the new customer self-service website?
A.
Use the request-response message exchange pattern to access the synchronous interface
provided by the CRM application. The request-response message exchange pattern matches the
synchronous interface provided by the CRM application, so this is the simplest and best approach
for integration.
B.
When customer information from the CRM application is needed, asynchronously fetch the
information by using the store-and-forward integration pattern. This approach allows the selfservice website to respond quickly to customer requests without waiting for the CRM application.
The website can display the fetched customer information when it is available.
C.
Use the request optional-response message exchange pattern to access the CRM application.
If the CRM application responds quickly (for example, in 5 seconds) use that response. If the CRM
application does not respond quickly, then the optional response was not returned and processing
continues.
D.
When customer information from the CRM application is needed, post a message to a topic
queue by using the publish-and-subscribe integration pattern. This approach allows the
CRMapplication or any other application subscribing to the topic queue to respond with customer
information.
E.
Use the polling integration pattern to find the necessary customer information in the CRM
application database. Obviously the data exists in the CRM application database. Obliviously the
data exists in the CRM application database, so the slow response from the CRM application can
be eliminated by polling directly from the CRM application database.
Explanation:
An asynchronous exchange patternwould be good here. Asynchronous
communication can be used when the response time for the source system is too slow to support
the timelines of the calling systems.
Note: Store-and-forward is a special case of asynchronous communication. In the
store-and-forward pattern, the request message is put onto a queue for later retrievalby the target of the request message. Similarly, the response message is put onto a
response queue for later retrieval. This is a very common approach used by messaging
systems (e.g. MQ Series) to integrate with legacy systems. The architecture must
support this integration pattern to facilitate integration with legacy systems and
existing messaging systems.
Reference: Oracle Reference Architecture, Service-Oriented Integration, Release 3.0