Systems Integration

Course Objectives

The objective of this course is to introduce students to the problems that system engineers must resolve when integrating systems. In addition, the course will cover some of the solutions to these problems. The goal of the course is to provide the student with an appreciation for the technical challenges associated with system integration. Although there are no prerequisites for the course, some experience in software development will be helpful. This course is intended to help project managers and developers avoid the pitfalls of projects that are primarily focused on integration of legacy systems, demystify security and enable software managers, developers, and others to understand the challenges of securing a software system and state-of-the-practice.

By the end of the course students will be able to:

• Understand different levels of integration
• Understand the challenges of maintaining a consistent global state
• Describe the differences among various types of middleware
• Describe different types of integration patterns
• Identify and avoid some of the pitfalls of integrating legacy systems

Prerequisites

None

Required Textbook

Topics

Lecture 1:      Introduction to Systems Integration - Why Integrate? Integrate What?
Lecture 2:      Distributed Computing I - Concurrency
Lecture 3:      Distributed Computing II - Global Consistency
Lecture 4:      Architectural Mismatch
Lecture 5:      Integration Patterns
Lecture 6:      Data Integration
Lecture 7:      Security and System Integrations
Lecture 8:      Middleware
Lecture 9:      Enterprise Integration I - Service Oriented Architectures (SOA)
Lecture 10:    Network Integration
Lecture 11:    System Integration Life Cycle