Business data are exchanged between applications and their technical components by means of information flows.
application
An application is a complete installation of a software offering a functionality to an end user. The application might consist of or require other technical components to run.
component
A component is a reusable block of functionality that provides technical functionality to the application or to the platforms that an application runs on. Components do not usually provide functionality to end users. Typical components are operating systems, database management systems, or application servers.
information flow
An information flow describes the exchange of business data between source and target applications.
A business data is the concrete instantiation of a data category, which represents an abstract entity that is relevant to the company's business. A data category is typically not versioned and represents, for example, Product Data or Master Data. Business data, on the other hand, represents the concrete instances that are used by an application and typically are versioned. A data category Master Data, for example, could have the business data Master Data Account, Contract, etc.