How to manage 'Transaction Events' in Middleware Integration?

Design Techniques behind 'Audit Trail' in Integration Services :

When the two heterogeneous applications are integrated in an enterprise, it is very important to log the details for future reference.  

This is because, collecting the data before managing it for analytics is the important piece of design.  These data if made structured to the maximum would give competitive edge to the retailer for future BI analytics and decision making process.

Is it just logging of information or there is more?

Let us step a bit farther to see what the CXOs want when they rapidly expanding their business when they are in the growth path. The below listed analytics are critical for decision making.

1. Current Business Trend.
2. Different dimensions of Business Data.
3. Growth dimensions
4. Effective Customer Support
5. Avenues for business expansion

Well, how are these related to a very basic logging which is known as audit trail?  Lets see.

During the system integrations, millions of elementary data are flowing between different systems which is of huge help to construct the high level business analytic details.  The integration solution would need to address the above by an effective logging of critical events.

What are the basic and key information that forms an effective logging?

1. Transaction Time and Date.
2. Last updated Time and Date.
3. The system and person involved in the particular transaction.
4. Status of the transactions.
5. Messages associated to transactions.
6. Critical details about the transaction entity.
7. Information about the purpose of the transaction.

The audit trail can contain any additional piece of information that would be useful for future reference.  However, it is better to separate them into a secondary location and have them referenced from the above listed key information.  In a nut-shell, the metadata details about every message needs to be collected and consolidated even before planning the BI and Big data needs.

Rather than aiming to address the immediate integration needs, the system has to be designed to log the events and the associated details irrespective of the future analytics and business needs.  

This is because, the data about transactions are very valuable and will be very expensive if missed out (it cannot be retrieved later if not done from the very beginning) and hence it is essential to consolidate them from the beginning and decide how these can be used based on the business expansion needs.

When these data are made available and consolidated, it can serve as the input for its future business analytics needs and hence the business can make strategical and tactical adjustments.