Integration Patterns Applied to Print Production

In a modern printing plant software systems are ubiquitous and indispensable. Systems for order management, production planning, and other administrative systems are implemented in software. Most, if not all, equipment on the plant floor has a software front-end that either controls the physical equipment directly or displays instructions for a human operator to interpret and execute. These software systems are not isolated islands. During production they need to communicate and exchange information. For example, a prepress workflow system may send configuration parameters to production equipment and production equipment may send status updates to production monitoring systems. This type of communication is typically implemented by sending messages, discrete units of data, between the systems. Integrating heterogeneous systems using messaging is nothing unique to the printing industry. It is a well-proven solution and there are several general-purpose solutions available for integrating disparate systems using messaging. The experience and knowledge on the subject has been documented in several pattern languages. This paper examines Job Definition Format’s messaging protocol Job Messaging Format (JMF), and maps JMF concepts to patterns found in pattern languages for system integration using messaging. Weaknesses found in JMF are discussed and patterns are applied to suggest alternative solutions. The result is JMF expressed using general enterprise integration patterns. * Digital Media division, ITN, Linköping University, Sweden Proceedings, TAGA 2006, 58th Annual Technical Conference, Vancouver, Canada