Enterprise application integration (EAI) evolved in the early IT industry to allow information exchange between mainframe and minicomputer systems. Common integration methods included file transfers and shared databases. In the 1990s, messaging-oriented middleware (MOM) emerged as a new paradigm, using message queues to enable both real-time and non-real-time integration across unpredictable computer networks. This represented a shift towards loosely-coupled integration using queues rather than tightly-coupled methods like remote procedure calls. Today, service-oriented architectures and microservices are further advancing loosely-coupled integration approaches.