Leveraging Information and Intelligence

When I wrote the EAI book back in the 90s I described several froms of integration, including data level, method or service level, API level, and user interface level.   

Addressing the user interface as a point of integration was a bit of leap for me.   Indeed, many found it "too primitive," and thus should be excluded from the book.   However, I left it in and I'm glad I did.  Clearly, it's an effective form of interfacing with an application, and has proven to be effective and efficient as well.

From my book:

"User interface level EAI, the most primitive of all EAI levels, is also the most necessary.  Other EAI levels might be more technologically appealing and more efficient, but the simple reality is that, in many applications, the user is the only available mechanism for accessing logic and data.  In spite of its inefficiency in 'getting into' an application, the user interface has an advantage in that it does not require any changes to the source or target application."

To this point there are a few companies that just focus on this type of integration today, and have gone well beyond the traditional uses as well.   A few that comes to mind include Kapow, who provides technology to access information on Web pages using very sophisticated mechanisms, and Open Span, providing technology to access any information you can see on your desktop, and address that information in any number of ways for whatever architecture use, including data integration.   

The need for this is clear.   Many applications, Web sites, and packaged systems don't provide APIs or other ways to access the data.   However, they always provide some sort of user interface and in many instances that's the only way to access the data for integration with other systems.  This includes turning primitive and poorly structured screens of information, into more modern data service for data integration, or other purposes.

I suspect this form of integration will continue to be popular going forward, and something you should consider if your information systems are lacking well defined interfaces, and they typically are.