Deploy diverse enterprise data transformation on System z and other platforms – without coding
from CCR2, Issue 4 - 2008
Kimberly Drouot, Worldwide Transformation and Industry Standards Sales Leader, was interviewed for this product update.
Do you need to integrate complex enterprise data, while adhering to emerging standards? IBM WebSphere Transformation Extender V8.2 provides an Eclipse-based design studio, industry-specific solutions and IBM WebSphere Adapters for accelerated any-to-any data transformation and validation.
These solutions let you connect enterprise applications without integration coding to extend your business process management and Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) solutions. In addition, new financial services, insurance, EDI, e-mail and FTP accelerators help keep your transformations up-to-date with the latest standards. Multiple deployment options include the IBM System z platform.
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From stock exchanges to pharmaceuticals, from manufacturing to insurance and global commerce, IBM WebSphere Transformation Extender provides high-throughput, highly complex data processing capabilities in some of the most mission-critical applications in the world – and it does it without scripting ESQL or coding in Java or COBOL.
Transformation Extender lets you lay out application-to-application data transformations in a completely graphical Eclipse-based environment. The new Eclipse look and feel is introduced in V8.2. WebSphere Transformation Extender Design Studio runs as standalone workbench or as a plug-in to other Eclipse-based studios for complementary products.
There is no proprietary coding language to learn with WebSphere Transformation Extender, because the transformations and data processes are all maintained within a spreadsheet-like graphical user interface. As a result, you never need to write code to handle complex transformations.
Use a common tool for all WebSphere integration
The Eclipse workbench delivers a common, standards-based experience across the IBM WebSphere portfolio. You can now create any type of data transformation from within the IBM WebSphere Integration Developer environment, which many developers also use for customizing other IBM WebSphere solutions, such as IBM WebSphere Application Server and IBM WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). You can now also use IBM WebSphere Message Broker Toolkit to design data transformation.
New IBM WebSphere Adapters for file transfer protocol (FTP) and email are now common across IBM WebSphere solutions as well, including WebSphere Transformation Extender.
Works well with other WebSphere products
You can capitalize on WebSphere Transformation Extender as a universal transformation engine across multiple WebSphere solutions. V8.2 introduces a new edition, WebSphere Transformation Extender for Integration Servers, which includes direct integration with other WebSphere products, in addition to earlier WebSphere Message Broker support.
WebSphere Transformation Extender for Message Broker is co-packaged in a new edition with an extender that takes advantage of WebSphere Transformation Extender service component architecture (SCA) bindings within IBM WebSphere Process Server and WebSphere ESB.
IBM has also enhanced integration between WebSphere Transformation Extender and WebSphere Message Broker with new features and functions running natively inside Message Broker, such as map node support for the WebSphere Transformation Extender resource registry, wildcards and map caching. These enhancements more tightly integrate the two solutions, simplifying both development and production phases.
Stay ahead of format changes with up-to-date industry packs
WebSphere Transformation Extender enterprise application and industry packs can reduce time and cost to create and maintain interfaces. Industry packs provide out-of-the-box capabilities to accelerate the integration of industry-standard data formats and remove risk from projects that require conformance to regulatory or service provider guidelines.
IBM updates reflect changes in the standards. V8.2 includes new and updated packs for the following industries:
- Financial services. Two new packs – for National Automated Clearing House Association (NACHA) and Financial Information eXchange (FIX) – as well as an update with changes in the Single Euro Payment Area (SEPA) standard.
- Insurance. A new pack for Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development (ACORD).
- Healthcare. Updated packs for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Health Level 7 (HL7) and National Council for Prescription Drugs (NCPDP).
In addition, IBM has released its annual updates to Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) for ANSI X.12 and United Nations/Electronic Data Interchange for Administration, Commerce and Transport (UN/EDIFACT) protocols.
Multiple interoperable deployment options
WebSphere Transformation Extender for z/OS supports multiple execution methods, as do WebSphere Transformation Extender products that run on other platforms. This allows you to rapidly integrate universal transformation capabilities within your existing System z architecture with minor impact to your current processes and organization.
Version 8.2 adds a 64-bit tolerance runtime, which allows the transformation engine to run on 64-bit systems and support 64-bit client applications. This technology allows you to run WebSphere Transformation Extender on Linux for System z, in addition to earlier z/OS support.
As a result, using the same design environment, you can deploy transformations to several runtime environments, including:
- Native CICS transactions
- Native IMS transactions
- OPEN MVS or Unix Systems Services (USS)
- Linux on System z
- Native batch via job control language (JCL) or from a COBOL application or program.
In addition to 64-bit tolerance, general performance enhancements in this version support growing data volumes and the market convergence toward XML as a data structure. The latest XML toolkit for z/OS, for example, lets you more easily use XML structures as input and more optimally parse XML document structures. Native support for XML helps the System z platform transform XML data structures much faster.
A partial list of additional enhancements
Here are just a few of the other numerous enhancements to V8.2:
- Bi-directional code page support - to extract information from files that include multiple languages within a single document structure.
- Substitution characters - to allow you to translate between code pages when characters lack an equivalent in the target code page.
- The option to count data in bytes or characters - to manage situations such as Chinese double-byte characters.
- A Java exit function - to more easily interface to external Java programs.
- Support for Java 2 Platform Standard Edition (J2SE) version 1.5.
Improve your IT agility
The IBM WebSphere Transformation Extender engine allows you to deploy transformations to many runtime environments, including z/OS. Its Eclipse-based Design Studio lets you describe complex and mixed data types in their native form, using the same environment for all your WebSphere transformations. IBM keeps adapters up to date to help you stay ahead of emerging industry standards.
At runtime, the engine validates incoming data against content rules and provides a unique many-to-many model that allows it to execute all transformations, lookups and data enrichments with only one pass for highest performance.
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