tions. Translation Service. Consider data transformation or data translation as a data-mapping engine. The translator maps data among the different formats and syntaxes of the OSS applications. Data mapping and transformation is typically the largest effort in integration. The major part of this challenge is knowing the application data and rules at the integration end points. Complex data transformations are often required to map data from one application to another. EAI vendors provide a variety of tools with to accomplish data The Ultimate Guide to Building and Delivering OSS/BSS mapping, ranging from simple spreadsheets to complex data structure translators. Most also support data mapping using native languages such as Java. Separate code/lookup tables are sometimes necessary to support mapping between applications. Examples range from simple code translations, e.g. Order Type = "New" becomes OT=N, to more involved database lookup based translations for key cross reference mapping, e.g. customer id 1234 = 301-231-5646. Message Transport. Messaging and queuing software serves as a transport layer for most EAI tools and, in general, provides the ability to receive and deliver messages in a distributed environment - a core capability is an "industrial strength" heterogeneous messaging platform. This platform guarantees delivery, making sure a message gets to its targets, once and only once, even if a node is unavailable when the message arrives. The platform also provides for redundancy and fail-over of paths between applications. It provides a mechanism to scale to large message volumes via load-balancing capabilities over multiple distributed servers. EAI tools must scale to support the addition of more applications, more messages and more users while maintaining performance. While many of these message transports are based on the publish/subscribe paradigm, others are based on a more synchronous, request-response approach. In some cases, EAI vendors support both capabilities. Event Flow. Many EAI vendors refe