Conflict Patterns: Toward Identifying Suitable Middleware

Architectural patterns aid developers in resolving coarse-grained integration problems among components. These patterns are assembled from functionality slices that resolve various communication problems between applications. However, little attention has been paid to how interoperability problems and their resolution are embodied in these patterns. Mapping these problems to specific functionality promises insight into composing integration architectures by illuminating the consistent, high-level solutions that resolve individual conflicts. The objective of this paper is to describe patterns of interoperability conflicts along with their typical resolution in an effort to present reusable solutions for the design of integration architectures. To this end we present the Extender-Controller-Translator (ETC) model, and detail its use in a pattern to resolve the problem of data inconsistency.