Here be dragons: an integration shopping list

Application integration has become the ´philosopher´s stone´ for many industrial companies. Many integration projects have succeeded in solving the problem they set themselves, but left the problem of integration unsolved. The integration of applications for a complex design environment is particularly rich in such projects. In the author´s experience, a broader view of integration is needed, and several complementary models of integration are described, together with a list of 12 different design issues that integration projects need to resolve. It is not claimed that a project covering all these features will succeed, but rather an absence of a feature is an indication that the project will fail.