Guide for Integrating Partner-Developed Applications with Open Cloud MDM

Integrating a partner-developed application, like a payroll management system, with our Open Cloud MDM can be streamlined by following best practices and leveraging certain features and capabilities. The goal is to achieve minimal effort integration while ensuring data consistency, quality, and system performance. Here's a process to facilitate this integration:

1. Utilize our RESTful or SOAP APIs: Specifically designed for easy integration with the MDM system, these APIs manage operations like creating, reading, updating, and deleting master data. Your application should use these APIs to interact with the MDM system.
2. Leverage Pre-Built Integration Adapters: Utilize available connectors or adapters to significantly streamline your application's integration process.
3. Implement Our Data Synchronization: Utilize the MDM's data synchronization mechanisms to ensure that your application is always using the most current and accurate data.
4. Align with Our Common Data Models: Ensure your application’s data model is in sync with our MDM system’s schema, simplifying data mapping and transformation.
5. Integrate with Our Workflow and Business Rules Engine: Seamlessly connect your application to our workflow engine and business rules management system for automated data processing and validation.
6. Ensure Compliance with Data Governance and Security Policies: Your application must adhere to the established data governance and security protocols of our MDM system to ensure data quality, privacy, and regulatory compliance.
7. Automate Testing and Validation: Use our automated testing tools to validate the integration. This includes testing data flows, API responses, and ensuring that your application adheres to our data quality rules.
8. Utilize our MDM’s Event Management: Integrate with the MDM’s event management system for real-time data updates and notifications.
9. Provide Comprehensive Documentation and Training: Develop detailed documentation of the integration process and offer training sessions for your team and stakeholders.
10. Monitor and Optimize Performance: After integration, continuously monitor the system’s performance and make necessary adjustments to optimize data processing and load handling.

By following these steps, the integration of your application with the Open Cloud MDM system can be achieved with minimal effort. It's important to leverage the MDM’s existing infrastructure and capabilities to reduce the need for custom development, ensuring a more efficient and reliable integration process.

Supertype and Subtype Entities for Seamless Integration

The Open Cloud MDM data model is designed with a hierarchical structure comprising 'Supertype' and 'Subtype' entities to facilitate a unified and efficient data management system. This structure enhances the versatility and integration capability of the model, making it suitable for a wide range of business applications.

Supertype Entities:

• These entities act as a foundational layer, encompassing universally applicable and essential attributes. For example, in a 'Person' entity, common attributes like ID, first name, surname, and date of birth are included.
• This approach ensures that all applications accessing these entities have a consistent and shared understanding of core data elements, promoting data integrity and reusability.

Subtype Entities:

• Subtypes extend the supertype entities, allowing for the addition of specific attributes tailored to particular business needs. For instance, subtypes such as 'Employee', 'Supplier', or 'Customer' can be developed, each augmenting the 'Person' supertype with additional, role-specific attributes.
• These subtypes are particularly beneficial for specialized business applications developed by HubDock partners, such as in Human Resources (HR), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), or Supply Chain Management (SCM). They leverage the shared structure of supertype entities while providing application-specific data handling.

Integration of Similar Subtypes:

• In cases where different HubDock development partners create similar subtype entities (for example, various 'Customer' applications), these can be logically merged and integrated through configurations in API management and the request-response processor.
• This ability to merge similar subtypes ensures data harmonization across different applications, even when developed independently, facilitating seamless cross-application data flow and integrity.

Integration with External Applications:

• The Open Cloud MDM model accommodates external applications that may not follow the Open Cloud MDM standard, integrating them via the 'Dock' integration framework. This acts as a gateway, translating and processing data between external applications and the Open Cloud MDM system.
• Such integration is crucial for organizations employing a diverse range of applications, ensuring that data from non-standard systems can be effectively incorporated into the MDM ecosystem without compromising data quality or security.