Application Architect's Guide to Connecting Data to Critical Systems

Abstract

A critical system is a software application that is core to the most important processes of an organization, thereby, impacting the organization's cost, revenue, and risk structures. Examples of critical systems include applications that:

• Generate revenue
• Help satisfy regulatory pressure
• Contribute to operational control
• Enable competitive advantage
• Foster customer and partner loyalty
• Reduce product or service delivery time

The way an IT organization develops, deploys, and maintains critical systems correlates directly to the overall success of the business. An organization's bottom line suffers when these critical systems have the following issues:

• Cannot be deployed on time
• Suffer from availability, performance, reliability or scalability shortcomings
• Cannot be maintained or upgraded to meet dynamic business requirements
• Require excessive IT labor or system resource cost

To ensure success of critical systems, most organizations invest heavily in the design and implementation of the application architecture. Typically, this investment is concentrated in the following components of the architecture: network, operating system, web/application server, programming language, and database technology. The key component missing in this list is the database connectivity layer, even though this component plays an integral part in connecting the application code to the underlying database.

Today's critical systems have zero tolerance for delays or errors relating to accessing, processing, and storing data. Inefficient or unreliable data connectivity can lead to poor performance, availability, and scalability, and to data integrity issues.

The remainder of this paper discusses the technical benefits you should look for in database connectivity components, and the financial and business implications of your database connectivity choice.

Read the full whitepapter as a PDF: Database Connectivity for Critical Business Systems: An Application Architect's Guide.