How it works

Large IT departments have evolved to include many different applications built over time using a variety of technologies. Newer applications have been created that access functionality from these disparate legacy applications. Dependencies between the actions that make up a business transaction have to be coordinated across these different applications. Managing these potentially complex business transactions in this "loosely coupled" world is challenging.

For example: a corporate cash management facility provided by a global commercial bank to Fortune 500 customers would require the ability to transparently transfer money between accounts that are managed by banking applications in different countries. Such systems might have been brought into the bank's group through mergers, acquisitions, or normal evolution. The integrity of a cross-system money transfer requires that the cash management application ensures that the transfer is completed in both systems, or is cancelled in both systems if a failure occurs.

Using Choreology Cohesions, this built-in consistency capability is available at the application level rather than only at the database level. Cohesions enables business-rule driven cancellations to be applied, enabling cancellation fees to be levied or compensating reversal processes to be started. The product therefore enables the rules and contracts of business relationships to be directly reflected in coordinated applications.

Cohesions is also the first product of its kind designed specifically for modern enterprise systems, where applications run on multiple platforms, and are built using different computer languages, messaging protocols and paradigms. Java applications can be connected either by Java remote invocation or using SOAP/HTTP. As the product evolves, other language and messaging combinations will be made available.