PNNL

Abstract

Architectures and technologies for enterprise application integration are relatively mature, resulting in a range of standards-based and proprietary middleware technologies. In the domain of complex analytical applications, integration architectures are not so well understood. Analytical applications such as those used in scientific discovery, emergency response, financial and intelligence analysis exert unique demands on their underlying architecture. These demands make existing integration middleware inappropriate for use in enterprise analytics environments. In this paper we describe SIFT (Scalable Information Fusion and Triage), a platform designed for integrating the various components that comprise enterprise analytics applications. SIFT exploits a common pattern for composing analytical components, and extends an existing messaging platform with dynamic configuration mechanisms and scaling capabilities. We demonstrate the use of SIFT to create a decision support platform for quality control based on large volumes of incoming delivery data. The strengths of the SIFT solution are discussed, and we conclude by describing where further work is required to create a complete solution applicable to a wide range of analytical application domains.