The most basic yet challenging problem of business integration is reconciling
differences between data and messages within the enterprise. Enterprises have
multiple application systems that hold data related to the data in other
applications. The problem is the way in which those data are expressed - the
semantic (or meaning) and syntactic (or format) incompatibilities between the
disparate data models and representations used by applications. In a way, the
data model for all of these different bits and pieces is inconsistent.
The crucial role of transformation in a business integration strategy is to
be able to map these inconsistent data formats and data models into common
objects that can be shared among the various applications. The role of data
transformation is crucial, because at each and every step of a business
process, transformation of the data is typicall... (more)