Corporate Information Factory

CHAPTER 11

The Internet/Intranet Components

The components of the corporate information factory (CIF)—external world, applications, integration and transformation layer (I & T layer), operational data store (ODS), data warehouse, data marts, and exploration/data mining warehouse—do not stand alone. The different components of the architecture pass data in an orderly manner between themselves by means of a communications fabric. One way of thinking about this fabric is in terms of the Internet/intranet, though networks as a means to pass data actually existed long before the creation of intranets. The advent of the Internet/intranet has led to the formalization and categorization of the various types of intercommunications among the different architectural entities.

The Internet/intranet—from the perspective of the CIF—is the line of communication along which data flows and the different components interact with each other. Figure 11.1 shows that the Internet/intranet handles those communications that occur within the confines of the CIF.

The purpose of this communications fabric is to:

   Transport data

   Distribute processing

Figure 11.1  The different kinds of transmissions within ...