Information Aggregation general guidelines

To help you determine if the Information Aggregation business pattern is appropriate for the design of your Web-based application, the following information details the business and IT scenario into which an Information Aggregation solution fits.

Businesses developing a solution needing the following characteristics should consider using the Information Aggregation business pattern:

• The end-users and customers need to directly interact with business processes and/or data.
• The business activity has a need to aggregate, organize, and present information from various sources within and outside of the organization.

Users of applications, built according to the Information Aggregation business pattern might be internal or external to an organization. In both cases, the objective is to transform raw data into useful information. For example:

• Business Intelligence (BI) applications typically focus on internal users such as executives, managers and business analysts. They are used to develop information that is conclusive, fact based, and actionable. Such information is used to gain strategic insights and to drive important business decisions.
• Portals aggregate information from disparate data sources and allow users to personalize this information to meet their preferences. There are many examples of such portals on the Web, including Yahoo and MSN.

Initially, one may find architectural similarities between applications that implement the Information Aggregation and Self-Service business patterns. However, what distinguishes these two is the user’s interaction with data versus a business transaction. Applications that implement the Information Aggregation business pattern facilitate direct interaction between users and data. These applications provide significant freedom and flexibility in accessing and manipulating data. This is one of the primary characteristics that differentiate this pattern from the Self-Service business pattern, which facilitates direct interaction between users and business transactions and processes. Typically, applications that implement the Information Aggregation business pattern depend on applications that implement the Self-Service business pattern as the original source of much of the data. This is especially true because business activities are recorded on a minute-to-minute basis by applications that implement the Self-Service business pattern.

Designing applications that implement the Information Aggregation business pattern can be challenging for many reasons. User requirements tend to be vague and constantly changing. Several applications can be built simultaneously, some of which have common data needs while others may have conflicting needs. To overcome these challenges, best practice suggests that population and information access functionality be separated in the design. This separation allows for greater flexibility in changing either the population function or the information access function without impacting the other.

This Business pattern can be realized using several Application patterns based on the needs of the application.

This pattern typically consists of:

• Users who:
  • Will have different preferences and want to access different views of the data
  • Will typically access the solution using a Web browser or a browser based Internet appliance. When access is not from within the company intranet, the enterprise has very little or no control over how an access device is set-up or configured. Alternatively the user may access the application internally through a fat client on the LAN.
  • Can access the solution from any location across the Internet
• A network which
  • Is based on TCP/IP and other Internet technologies
  • Can be a dedicated LAN connection, a Broadband connection or a dial-up connection
• Disparate data sources, including:
  • Other web sites and portals
  • Core business systems
  • Databases and
  • Other Transient data sources
• A set of interactions that include
  • Aggregating multiple sources of data
  • Accessing distilled views of the data

This pattern can be observed in solutions such as:

• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Sales Analysis solutions where users on a LAN (network) perform data analysis against a data mart or data warehouse (data).
• Sporting Event Sites that allow millions of fans (users) to have real time access to the latest news, scores and results (data) from sporting events, using various devices such as Web browsers, personal digital assistants and wireless phones (network).
• Internet (network) portals that aggregate information from disparate core business data sources (data) and allow thousands of users (users) to personalize this information to meet their preferences.

If you have determined that the Information Aggregation business pattern can provide an appropriate solution design for the application you are developing, next familiarize yourself with a few important Information Aggregation concepts.

If the Information Aggregation business pattern is not appropriate for your development efforts, review the Business patterns to determine which pattern best addresses your e-business needs.