Understanding Sonic/Actional etc

Posted by Admin on 23-Mar-2011 12:16

Trying to get to grips with Sonic and figure out how we could use Sonic within our business.

I posted a thread a few weeks back that outlines where we are with our current application:

http://communities.progress.com/pcom/thread/37394?tstart=0

Current situation:
Several identical databases for each business division, each with its own appserver.  Client - 90% web-client connecting through to the required appserver.

This is great, except in the instances where we want to access data from multiple databases at the same time - e.g. for a web application where the client has little or no notion of the separation of the underlying data.

And for the main web-client app, multi-tenancy is looking like a solution for us i the future.

Increasingly though, we are dealing with transactions to and from third parties – e.g.  a third-party piece of software will update servicing information for equipment or a Purchase Invoice system will update financial records on the main database.

In the two examples above, one is running a stored procedure directly on the third-party SQL DB and the other is exchanging data through a progress MSSQL server.  In a third example, we are exposing a number of web services to third party for order processing.

My question(s):
Can Sonic facilitate and monitor the data exchanges in the examples above? – is that what Sonic is all about? – and where does Actional slot into this?  I like the idea of everything been loosely coupled, though in many circumstances we are limited to what the third-party can offer.  In addition I can see where we could use Sonic internally to facilite transactions between internal systems (e.g. Group account records updated by divisional account records)

I realise these are fairly broad questions but if any pointers/advice would be most welcome.

Thanks,

Chris

All Replies

Posted by sfritz on 24-Mar-2011 02:28

Hi Chris,

Explaining all details about Sonic and Actional in a forum post is challenging :-)

Sonic: Even if you are using "third party software" and webservices Sonic might make sense to decouple everything. It is not so much about how you communicate with the end systems. It is more about how to mediate the message flow between the systems and between thsoe "adapters".

Actional Managment Server: Actional allows you to see what is happening from a technical AND from a business perspective. It shows you the interactions between systems and lets you define policies to monitor "something". "Something" can be something technical (e.g. average response time) or business related (e.g. order ammount >1000).

In addition Actional Intermediary is very strong on the webservices side and lets you put a layer in front of your ESB/JMS/webservies.

You can define security, additional processing, versioning etc. on the new layer and this also decouples the public interface from the backend webservice implementation. If you have to change the internal webservice, customers can still use the old interface without interruption. Similar can be achieved by using Sonic ESB. That is the area where Sonic and Actional have some overlapping.

I'd recommend you contact your local Progress office to get a presentation and maybe a demo of both products.

Or mail me (sfritz at progress.com) and I will arrange a contact for you.

Regards

Stefan

Posted by Admin on 24-Mar-2011 03:54

Explaining all details about Sonic and Actional in a forum post is challenging :-)


I guessed as much TBH :-)  Sounds like we could make use of both products, and with a large web services project on the horizon Sonic and/or Actional seem to be a good fit.  We're due a visit from Progress shortly so will get this on the agenda - I've seen a Sonic demo a while but at the time didn't fully understand the concept and how it would slot into our infrastructure.

Chris

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