DataXtend Semantic Integrator (SI)

What's New in Progress DataXtend 8.5

Delivering responsive business integration requires a more agile, flexible IT infrastructure. This next generation integration infrastructure is realized in the delivery of Progress DataXtend v8.5 now pre-integrated to work seamlessly with Progress® Sonic® ESB and Progress® Actional® as a comprehensive integration solution.

Version 8.5 represents a significant step forward for DataXtend Semantic Integrator (SI). With this new release, DataXtend SI offers enterprise organizations significantly increase developer productivity when it comes to semantic data integration. DataXtend 8.5 gives developers:

• Support for Transport headers in DataXtend SI mappings
• Support for any/anyAttribute XML Schema Types
• Improved Date/Time Support

With the simultaneous release of DataXtend 8.5 and Sonic 8.5, Progress Software greatly improves on the integration between these products, facilitating better collaboration between development teams, simplified usability and increased architectural flexibility.

• When working in concert, DataXtend and Sonic now provide you with a tightly-integrated development and deployment environment that ensures improved developer productivity and superior enterprise service delivery.
• DataXtend SI users now have access to the complete Sonic Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) infrastructure, for improved performance and data service scalability.
• Sonic also now includes improved visibility and impact analysis capabilities which allow developers to easily visualize the interdependencies of data exchanges and make changes to critical integration applications without negatively impacting production systems.

With DataXtend 8.5 and Sonic 8.5 working together, move beyond siloed data services and instead extend semantic data transformation and integration to the entire enterprise. Developers now take advantage of the richness of the Sonic ESB runtime while packaging DataXtend data services packaged as native Sonic ESB services.

• Take advantage of Sonic ESB’s patented Dynamic Routing Architecture and deliver unmatched, software-based fault-tolerance and scalability ideal for multi-site, high-transaction environments.
• Build your own data model iteratively and incrementally to eliminate the last mile of “data spaghetti” that accounts for over 40% of your integration costs.
• Employ GUI-driven configuration of Sonic ESB data sources and collaborate more effectively throughout the development lifecycle through better packaging and integration of services.
• Choose a shared development environment or separate, collaborative development environment – you decide.
• Reduce development efforts and improve performance and architectural flexibility with a comprehensive integration solution that enables IT to dynamically and more quickly respond to constant business change.

If your enterprise adopted service-oriented architecture (SOA) to improve agility, and then faced an implementation and maintenance process plagued by complexity, it's likely that one of the major culprits was data integration. A study conducted by Forrester Consulting for Progress, found that over 80% of organizations amplified the complexity by reconciling physical data level differences between applications and services with hand-coded point-to-point mappings.

DataXtend SI increases flexibility and decreases complexity of data services so you can finally reap all the benefits of your SOA. With DataXtend SI all mediation, governance, and change management of data integration, the entire lifecycle, is done in one place.

At the center of DataXtend SI are two components, the Designer and the Engine:

• Progress® DataXtend® SI Designer™ is a complete graphical design environment for creating and managing Exchange Models (mediations between applications and services with different structures and semantics), rules, and data services. DataXtend SI Designer imports existing schemas for data sources, data services, and the common information model, where they can be enriched with transformation and validation rules using DataXtend SI's comprehensive set of visual tools. With the 8.5 product release, DataXtend SI Designer integrates seamlessly with Progress Sonic ESB Workbench to deliver a unified, highly-collaborative development environment.
• Progress® DataXtend® SI Engine™ is the runtime component of the DataXtend SI architecture. At runtime, data is dynamically converted and validated before it is submitted to backend systems. All data services use standard interfaces for incorporation into any business process or target application. The output of DataXtend SI Engine is Java, running as stateless services with optimal performance.

And when coupled with Sonic ESB, DataXtend SI dramatically simplifies the problem of common data model lifecycle management, transformation, and validation. DataXtend SI leverages common Eclipse-based tooling and the ability to deploy semantic services in ESB containers. Just as the Sonic ESB helps organizations eliminate architectures of point-to-point connections, DataXtend SI solves the problem of point-to- point data transformations, making it much easier to integrate data and evolve a SOA with diverse, connected systems.

DataXtend SI helps create Exchange Models to minimize data integration complexity. Working without Exchange Models for your SOA can be like walking a tightrope without a net. DataXtend SI enables you to:

• See where data is flowing, and how, between integrated applications and services.
• Produce higher quality deliverables with integrated testing tools.
• Manage risk from change through impact analysis.
• Build on industry standard information/data models to jump start your projects.
• Improve the quality of the data flowing between your applications and services when you define complex validations and business rules at the entity-level.
• Simplify the use of complex models through computed attributes; streamline communications between members of your team.
• Manage changes with governance and life-cycle management tools.
• Integrate seamlessly with Progress Sonic ESB to simplify usability between products and streamline data service development, deployment and maintenance, while enhancing performance and scalability.
• Preserve your investment and deploy to your existing SOA environment.
• Provides a comprehensive integration solution that enables IT to dynamically change and deliver new business capabilities faster, and with reduced costs.

The common-model driven approach to data integration is a pragmatic and cost effective solution to reconciling semantic differences. DataXtend SI delivers the features and tools you need to promote data interoperability across enterprise boundaries.

• Design Environment for Creating and Managing Models - DataXtend's design environment helps you create and manage models, rules, and data services. You can import existing schemas for data sources, data services, and the common information model, where they are enriched with transformation and validation rules using DataXtend SI's comprehensive set of visual tools. DataXtend SI also exports models as XSDs and WSDL files to create new data services.
  
  
• Dynamically Convert and Validate Data Before it is Submitted - When you use the runtime component of the DataXtend SI architecture, data is dynamically converted and validated before it is submitted to backend systems. All data services use standard interfaces for incorporation into any business process or target application. The output of DataXtend SI Engine is Java.
  
  
• Model the Impact of Changes Before Production - The Exchange Model is the basis of robust change management. Since applications and services are linked to a common model, you can visualize and report on how information flows between all of the interconnected components. With DataXtend SI's Impact Analysis tools you can model the impact of a requirements change and evaluate how it will affect the production environment. The reports provide information that you can use to make well informed decisions regarding project resources and timelines.
  
  
• Tight Product Integration with Progress® Sonic® ESB - With Sonic 8.5 and DataXtend 8.5, developers create native Sonic artifacts directly from DataXtend SI Studio while enjoying point & click configuration of Sonic ESB endpoints. They leverage the Sonic ESB integration infrastructure for improved performance and scalability. Developers take advantage of a new Data Service Packager for Sonic XAR Support as well as GUI-driven configuration of Sonic-hosted data sources. They have enhanced distributed deployment and management capabilities, as well as the ability to import Sonic services from DataXtend SI. And, they also leverage Sonic multi-part messages and faults.
  
  
• Prefabricated DataXtend Adapters - DataXtend SI provides optimized connectivity to relational databases, and supports literally hundreds of adapters to packaged applications, B2B systems, and mainframe and legacy technologies. By using prefabricated, vendor-maintained services and adapters, companies can significantly reduce the time, cost, complexity and skills required to incorporate business assets into a SOA infrastructure.

An array of Financial Services standard adapters are available with Progress DataXtend SI.