Enterprise Navigation mechanism.

As every average enterprise my domain also contains many systems develop by many development tools and running on several operation systems. We’ve got Natural/Adabas applications running on MF, Java applications running on Sun and Linux machine, COM, .NET, Delphi, Magic systems running on Windows machines and SAP applications. Most of our systems running as web applications, several as client/server applications and few using virtual terminal.

One of the challenges that we deal with lately is the user demand to be able to navigate through all enterprise systems using one navigation mechanism. From the user point of view they are dealing with one system and they want to be able to navigate backward and forward from one window to other regardless of the system that the window belongs to.

If all systems were browser based (Intranet) it was much simpler problem. Still we need to decide if navigating from one page to another should be making on same window or new window should be open. Still some efforts need to be taken in order to find the right mechanism to navigate from one browser window to other window and backward (and keeping the last window state). But employing such a solution to systems running on browsers, virtual terminals and windows application is much more complicated. Except of the fact that navigation mechanism between browser, terminal server and widows is complicate task, most of those systems already written and can’t be change easily.

I’ll be happy to hear any suggestions since I’m in the middle of this effort : - ). If you’re in the beginning of creating your enterprise architecture, take in account navigation since it’s one of the nightmare that you going to meet if you don’t pay attention to it from the beginning.