Systems Integration Course

Lesson 1 • Core Integration Patterns Overview

Surveys point-to-point, hub-and-spoke, and bus-based patterns at a conceptual level. Provides a map of approaches students will study in depth in later chapters.

Lesson 2 • Integration Project Lifecycle

Outlines phases from discovery through decommission in an integration project. Sets expectations for how technical and managerial tasks interleave across the course.

Lesson 3 • Key Stakeholders and Their Roles

Identifies the people involved in integration projects and their responsibilities. Connects organisational context to technical decisions made later in the course.

Lesson 1 • Structured Data Formats

Covers XML, JSON, CSV, and binary formats with their trade-offs. Directly enables students to parse and produce integration payloads in subsequent chapters.

Lesson 2 • Protocol Selection and Trade-offs

Provides a decision framework for matching protocols to integration requirements. Synthesises the section content into actionable guidance for design exercises.

Lesson 3 • Data Serialisation and Encoding

Explains character encoding, compression, and schema-based serialisation techniques. Ensures students can handle encoding issues that arise in real integration pipelines.

Lesson 4 • Asynchronous Messaging Protocols

Introduces message queuing, publish-subscribe, and event streaming protocols. Prepares students to design decoupled integrations covered in the middleware chapter.

Lesson 1 • API Gateway and Management Platforms

Explains gateway functions including routing, rate limiting, authentication, and analytics. Links API management to the security and monitoring topics in later chapters.

Lesson 2 • REST API Design Principles

Covers resource modelling, URI conventions, HTTP verb usage, and response design. Gives students the vocabulary to critique and improve API designs in labs.

Lesson 3 • GraphQL and Alternative API Styles

Compares GraphQL, gRPC, and event-driven API styles against REST. Broadens students' design toolkit for scenarios where REST is suboptimal.

Lesson 4 • API Specification and Documentation

Teaches specification-first design using standard description languages and documentation tools. Connects to contract-driven development practised in integration testing chapters.

Lesson 1 • Workflow Orchestration and Routing

Covers content-based routing, splitter-aggregator, and saga patterns for complex flows. Prepares students to build multi-step integration workflows with error handling.

Lesson 2 • Integration Platform as a Service

Covers cloud-based integration platforms, connectors, and low-code flow builders. Connects on-premise ESB knowledge to modern cloud-native integration approaches.

Lesson 3 • Message Transformation and Mapping

Teaches canonical data models, XSLT, and graphical mapping for payload transformation. Enables students to resolve data format mismatches between integrated systems.

Lesson 4 • Middleware Performance and Scalability

Addresses throughput tuning, clustering, and horizontal scaling of middleware platforms. Connects platform configuration to the performance testing skills in later chapters.

Lesson 1 • ETL and ELT Fundamentals

Distinguishes ETL from ELT and explains when each approach is appropriate. Establishes the pipeline model that underpins all data integration exercises in this chapter.

Lesson 2 • Data Quality and Cleansing

Covers profiling, deduplication, standardisation, and validation rules for incoming data. Ensures students can detect and remediate quality issues before data reaches target systems.

Lesson 3 • Real-Time and Streaming Data Pipelines

Introduces stream processing concepts, windowing, and stateful operations for live data. Extends batch pipeline knowledge to continuous integration scenarios.

Lesson 4 • Change Data Capture Techniques

Explains log-based, trigger-based, and timestamp-based CDC for incremental data sync. Enables students to design low-latency pipelines without full-table extraction.

Lesson 1 • Authentication and Identity Management

Covers API keys, OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, and service-to-service authentication. Provides the identity foundation required for all secure integration patterns in this chapter.

Lesson 2 • Threat Modelling for Integration

Applies structured threat modelling to identify attack surfaces in integration architectures. Connects security theory to practical risk mitigation in integration design.

Lesson 3 • Authorisation and Access Control

Explains role-based, attribute-based, and policy-based access control for integration endpoints. Enables students to enforce least-privilege access across integrated systems.

Lesson 4 • Encryption and Data Protection

Addresses TLS configuration, payload encryption, and key management for integration data. Ensures students can protect sensitive data throughout the integration pipeline.

Lesson 1 • Contract and Consumer-Driven Testing

Teaches consumer-driven contract testing to verify API compatibility between producers and consumers. Directly addresses the versioning and compatibility risks introduced in the API chapter.

Lesson 2 • Chaos and Resilience Testing

Introduces fault injection, network partition simulation, and recovery validation for integrations. Prepares students to verify that integrations degrade gracefully under failure conditions.

Lesson 3 • Performance and Load Testing

Applies load generation, throughput measurement, and latency profiling to integration endpoints. Connects to middleware scalability concepts and prepares students for production sizing.

Lesson 4 • Integration Testing Strategy

Defines the testing pyramid for integrations and distinguishes unit, component, and end-to-end tests. Frames the test approach students apply throughout this chapter.

Lesson 1 • Integration Governance Frameworks

Establishes policies, standards, and review boards for managing integration assets at scale. Connects operational practices to enterprise-wide integration strategy and compliance.

Lesson 2 • Alerting and Incident Response

Defines alert thresholds, escalation paths, and runbooks for integration failures. Prepares students to detect and resolve integration incidents with minimal business impact.

Lesson 3 • Observability for Integration Systems

Covers metrics, logs, and distributed tracing as the three pillars of integration observability. Establishes the monitoring foundation for all operational practices in this chapter.

Lesson 4 • Continuous Improvement and KPIs

Defines key performance indicators and improvement cycles for integration operations. Closes the chapter by linking monitoring data to strategic decisions about integration investments.