I have an upcoming project to integrate several third-party systems. These systems allow me to request, write, and receive data using XML (different DTDs/schemas are used for each system).

We have several systems that do not talk to each other. So, for example, when we create a new customer account in our CRM, we have to manually enter the same data in the accounting system and the billing system.

What's the best approach for this project?

It would be nice to build something that populated the customer data to those other systems automatically. Should I build one central "traffic cop" app to make sure the data gets sent where it's needed?

Should I use web services or WCF somehow? (I don't have any experience with these so far.)
Would WCF work, given that I have to use the XML schemas imposed on me by the third-party systems? The third-party systems aren't using WCF.

I would like to build it using ASP.NET rather than Windows.

Web services and XML are the technologies developed for communicating between disparate systems.  So, you're on the right track.

But your "traffic cop" idea depends specifically on your system architecture and requirements.  In other words, only you can deteremine how to approach it.

Good luck!

 

 

 

Does the data need to be real-time?  Or will it be an incremental update such as hourly or daily?

jamesqua:

Answer4:

 The "central traffic cop" idea is referred to as a message broker, and there are a lot of things to worry about with the routing and processing of messages .  Microsoft has a product called BizTalk Server which provides a framework for dealing with these scenarios.  However, it isn't free.  You may also want to look into using SQL Server Integration Services.  This is more of a point-to-point solution where data is pumped from one location to another on an incremental basis.