Select a Business/Integration/Composite pattern, or a Custom design

Business patterns for Simple Implementations

Business patterns are high-level constructs that can be used to describe the key business purpose of a solution. These patterns describe the objectives of the solution, the high-level participants that interact in the solution, and the nature of the interactions between the participants. Structurally, these patterns are made up of at least two of the following three entities that occur in e-business solutions:

• Users of the solution - This can include customers, investors, partners, vendors, and so on.
• Enterprise or organization the users interact with - This "Business" entity can be used to represent the organization itself or systems (applications or software programs) that exist within the organization
• Data that exists within the organization - Data is distinguished from applications because the nature of interactions between these entities is very different.

These four Business patterns highlight the most commonly observed interactions between Users, Businesses, and Data. They are the fundamental building blocks of most e-business solutions, and have the following characteristics:

• Each pattern is self-contained. The scope of each pattern embraces the minimum end-to-end flows necessary to implement an automated business process. For example, the Self-Service business pattern designs solutions that includes an end-to-end transaction flow, a security flow, and a restart-recovery flow.
• Each pattern typically interacts with other patterns through one or more integration points. These integration points might include file transfer, message transfer, a common data base, common component, common application, common process, common access point, or a common workflow.

Self-Service	Also known as the User-to-Business pattern, Self-Service addresses the general case of internal and external users interacting with enterprise transactions and data.
Collaboration	Sometimes called User-to-User, the Collaboration business pattern addresses the interactions and collaborations between users. This pattern can be observed in solutions that support small or extended teams who need to work together in order to achieve a joint goal.
Information Aggregation	The Information Aggregation business pattern, also known as User-to-Data, can be observed in e-business solutions that allow users to access and manipulate data that is aggregated from multiple sources. This Business pattern captures the process of taking large volumes of data, text, images, video and so on and using tools to extract useful information from them.
Extended Enterprise	The Extended Enterprise business pattern (aka Business-to-Business or B2B) addresses the interactions and collaborations between business processes in separate enterprises. This pattern can be observed in solutions that implement programmatic interfaces to connect inter-enterprise applications.

Integration patterns, Composite patterns, and Custom designs for Advanced Implementations

The Integration patterns

The natural consequence of the "integration points" that enable interaction between the four Business patterns above is that today's more complex solutions can be built by combining these Business patterns. This is done by using one or more Integration patterns, which integrate multiple applications, multiple modes of access, and multiple sources of information to build one seamless application. Integration patterns are differentiated from Business patterns in that they do not themselves automate specific business problems. Rather, they are used within Business patterns to support more advanced functions, or to make Composite patterns feasible by allowing the integration of two or more Business patterns.

Inspecting a number of complex e-business systems, across many industries, two distinct sets of designs can be observed. Each of these design sets forms the basis for an Integration pattern:

Access Integration	The Access Integration pattern describes those recurring designs that enable access to one or more Business patterns. In particular, this pattern enables access from multiple channels (devices) and integrates the common services required to support a consistent user interface.
Application Integration	The Application Integration pattern brings together multiple applications and information sources without the user directly invoking them. This pattern is most effectively applied when developmental efforts require the seamless execution of multiple applications and access to their respective data in order to automate a complex, new business function.

The Composite patterns

When Business patterns and Integration patterns are combined to assemble solutions that perform complex business functions, certain recurring pattern combinations begin to emerge. For instance, most solutions today provide a personalized user experience. These solutions typically expose key functions of line-of-business applications by integrating with them. Consequently, most of these solutions combine an Access Integration pattern, a Self-Service pattern, and an Application Integration pattern to enable this complex functionality. Composite patterns represent commonly occurring combinations of Business patterns and Integration patterns such as this, and typically solve major portions of functionality within a solution.

The Patterns for e-business are designed for reuse in nearly any Web-based application development scenario. As such, the possible combinations of Business patterns and Integration patterns to form Composite patterns are extensive. The following, however, lists some of the most commonly occurring Composite patterns.

Electronic Commerce	Electronic Commerce combines the Self-Service and Information Aggregation business patterns with the Application Integration pattern to facilitate user interaction. Additionally, an electronic commerce site can integrate supply chain management functionality into the solution through the Extended Enterprise pattern, or e-mail confirmation of orders to customers through the Collaboration pattern.
e-Marketplace	e-Marketplaces are trading exchanges, sell-side hubs, and buy-side hubs that facilitate and promote buying, selling and business communities among trading partners within certain industries. These solutions represent some of the most comprehensive and complex e-business applications that exist today.
Portal	Though designed to facilitate many variations of similar functionality, a Portal solution typically aggregates multiple information sources and applications to provide a single, seamless and personalized access to users.
Account Access	Account access solutions provide customers around-the-clock access to their account information. They also allow users to inquire, update, and delete information on their individual accounts. Many applications fall under this category of solutions, ranging from trading applications provided by online brokerages to account manager functions provided by utilities such as telephone companies.

The Custom designs

The Patterns for e-business project is designed to address the majority of e-business applications an enterprise might need or want to develop. Because most enterprises have similar e-business needs, successful solutions can often be reused. Business, Integration, and Composite patterns provide a certain amount of flexibility in creating varied e-business applications to address minor differences in enterprise needs.

Often, however, the circumstances of individual companies vary extensively. When this occurs, an entirely individualized and customized solution might be required, for which no proven pattern exists.

The Custom designs section hosts solutions that, like Composite patterns, combine Business and Integration patterns to create advanced, end-to-end e-business applications. These solutions, however, have not been implemented to the extent of the Composite patterns. While some of the Custom designs that follow have been proven by use in a limited number of engagements, others attempt to predict solutions to emerging business problems an enterprise might encounter, without waiting for pre-tested, reusable designs to surface.