This section introduces you to using SCORE Adaptive Bridges, Delta’s flagship product for service-based integration, implementing the OMG Model Driven Architecture (MDA) to multiply the value of legacy applications and data stores. If you are not familiar with MDA and concepts such as PIM, PSM and Transformation then you can find more information here.

SCORE Adaptive Bridges uses Model Driven Legacy Integration (MDLI) to provide a simple and architectured approach to building Adaptive Services. If you are not familiar with these concepts then we suggest you have a look at the Business View to learn about Adaptive Services, or the Methodology View to lean about MDLI.

While it would be possible to build adaptive services “by hand” with tool support, this would be an extremely time consuming and error-prone process. MDLI is a model-centric approach to integration, compared with the code-centric approach support by many other tools. General purpose modeling tools are not sufficient to support MDLI, however, as they do not provide the automatic support that is required for building adaptive services.

SCORE Adaptive Bridges is a tool that has been designed to support MDLI and gives you all the tools and processes that you need to build adaptive services:

• Composition Repository – All information about your adaptive services is stored as platform independent composition models in the composition repository, an open XML-based repository accessed using the OMG Meta-Object Facility (MOF) standard. Sharing of the composition model with other tools is possible using the OMG XML Metadata Interchange Format (XMI) standard.
• Discovery – The first step in MDLI is to discover PSMs for the interfaces to your legacy applications and data stores. These are then automatically transformed into PIMs for composition into your adaptive services. Depending on the amount of metadata available from the PSM it might be necessary to augment the PIM. In vertical integration scenarios you will also discover the PSM for the target platform, for example when using Web services discovering the PSM from the WSDL tell SCORE Adaptive Bridges the interfaces you want to build for your adaptive services.
• Composition – In the second step of MDLI you create your service-based composition model from the various PIMs of the legacy applications and data stores. Composition involves describing the adaptive services to be created, as well as mapping between the services providers (the legacy systems) and that of the service consumers (the new application or client). Mapping includes both static and dynamic views – the structure (composition) and behavior (choreography).
• Production – In the final step of MDLI your adaptive services, as defined by your composition model, are transformed by SCORE Adaptive Bridges into PSMs and then into code for the application adapter (on the server side) and the adaptive proxy (on the client side). The application adapter and adaptive proxy are created independently of each other. This allows additional proxies to be generated for new platforms, for example, without affecting your legacy applications.
• SCOUT² Development Platform – SCORE Adaptive Bridges is fully integrated with SCOUT², Delta’s extensible development platform for project teams using multiple platforms, toolsets and change control environments. With SCOUT² your developers can concentrate on the task at hand – building adaptive services, leaving the all the technical infrastructure concerns to SCOUT².
• Integration in Motion – Integration projects are continual processes that must adjust to repeated changes in business and technical requirements. SCORE Adaptive Bridges gives you integrated processes, supported by an extensive collection of intelligent tools, to discover and adapt to changes whenever, and wherever, they occur.

Where to Go Next?

The following sections give you a more detailed look at the tools and processes that make up SCORE Adaptive Bridges. We start by looking at the Composition Repository, the common data store for all information about your adaptive services.