Enterprise Application Integration

Tools and methods that establish exchanges between applications not originally designed to communicate. Working from a model of the exchanges between applications, EAI translates the data so that the receiving application can use it and routes it correctly, notably through middleware. Originally developed in-house to make the applications of a company's information system talk to each other, the term now also covers software developed for business-to-business use that makes applications belonging to different partners' information systems communicate over the internet using XML.