Integrate Everywhere Without Coding

EXTOL business integration technology provides complete lifecycle support for a wide variety of integration problems - without coding.

Conventionally, businesses have solved B2B, application, data, and Cloud integration problems using different tools, methods, and middleware services.  But this strategy leads to adoption of multiple, overlapping, purpose-built integration tools, each with its own set of platform prerequisites, skill requirements, lifecycle methodologies, and application limitations. Companies that follow this path experience high integration delivery costs, skill requirements, and software maintenance overhead.

Other businesses, seeking to avoid the complexity and cost of multiple middleware platforms, fall back on familiar, traditional coding.  But coded integration also suffers from high delivery costs and skill requirements, and produces deliverables that can be difficult and costly to maintain, extend, and port to new platforms.

Neither approach is suited to the needs of close-to-cost businesses or mid-sized companies with limited IT resources and skill sets.

EXTOL resolves this impasse with one middleware environment and tool set that solves B2B, application, data, and Cloud integration problems.  And EXTOL’s Design-time Automation™ technology reduces time, effort, and cost in all  three phases of business integration – Build, Integrate, and Maintain.  Design-time Automation replaces tedious,  low-level coding and configuration with high-level modeling and object generation, freeing your IT staff to focus on high-value activities that require human decision-making.

EXTOL’s unique approach to business integration resolves long-standing integration problems and limitations by focusing on these core objectives:

• Integrate everywhere – Create integration processes that automate application, data, B2B, and Cloud integrations, with the same tools, middleware, and skills. Whether you need to integrate best of breed applications, onboard new EDI partners, or expose database content through a web service, everything is provided in one product, with no additional components to acquire, integrate, or manage.
• Use built-in mediations for any situation – Activate process automations using configurable mediations for EDI, web services, change data capture, messaging, and other cases.  Use a common set of adapters, document schemas, data transformations, and other integration objects to build and maintain business processes, regardless of the mediation type.
• Apply skills and best practices across projects – Establish best practices through reusable templates, objects, and mapping history patterns, and reuse them in multiple projects and mediations.  The core modeling and mapping skills you acquire with one integration project apply to every other.
• Support the entire integration lifecycle – Apply graphical tools at every stage in the integration life cycle, from project provisioning through testing and deployment. As you build and maintain integration objects, EXTOL Integration Studio retains your configurations in a built-in repository, where they can be maintained and reused.
• Achieve integration consistency across your business – Accumulate integration assets with each new project to provide a basis for subsequent integration efforts, as you move to new platforms, acquire new applications, and onboard new trading partners.

• Model business processes – Create and maintain business processes using drag-and-drop, graphical modeling.  Model process and data flows, with support for nested processes, multiple data transformations, data routing, email notifications, and other process automation features.
• Create powerful transformation maps – Generate mapping rules from drag-and drop actions, to transform, validate, enrich, route, cache, and aggregate data.  Unlike maps from most other vendors, EXTOL maps are structured, human-readable documents that facilitate understanding and downstream modification.
• Configure robust process mediations – Configure scheduled, data-driven, and event-driven mediations that automate activation of your business processes.  Save time by exploiting built-in mediation services rather than modeling mediation details.
• Configure adapters and monitors – Create adapters, monitors, and routing objects that connect integration processes and tasks with internal endpoints (files, databases, applications, services) and external endpoints (customers, suppliers, cloud applications, industry hubs, etc.).  Configured objects are retained in the EXTOL repository, and are reusable in other projects.
• Exploit shared best practices – Reuse integration templates, objects, and mapping histories to reduce the time needed to build and maintain projects.  Share mapping histories internally or download histories contributed by other companies from the Integration Pattern Repository. 

• Automate all three phases of business integration – Automate Build, Integrate, and Maintain activities with Design-time Automation™ Accelerators, and runtime activity monitoring and exception handling services.

• Create integration prototypes rapidly – Use the Project Builder feature of EXTOL Integration Studio to create working integration processes in minutes, by dragging objects onto a graphical scaffold and following visual validation cues to complete your project.  The resulting automations can execute independently or as parts of  larger, multi-stage business processes.
• Generate integration deliverables from data and metadata – Generate EDI partner endpoints and error-free document schemas for your data transformations in a fraction of the time needed to define them manually, by importing external metadata (for EDI schemas and endpoints, XML, and Database schemas) or using wizards to generate from sample data (for Flat files and Spreadsheets).  Document schemas can be used for both source  and target cases in data transformations.
• Automate data transformation mapping – Automate rule generation at the element, structure, and root levels with Smart Mapping, a powerful mapping Accelerator that employs advanced pattern matching, artificial intelligence,  and multiple rule generation methods.  Unlike other automated mapping tools, Smart Mapping requires no setup effort and can be tuned to suit your mapping requirements and preferences.
• Reuse past mapping patterns – Use the Smart Mapping history method to automate mapping based on the mapping history profiles you generate from previous mapping deliverables.  Or download mapping histories contributed by EXTOL and other EXTOL customers, from the Integration Pattern Repository.
• Automate project build and deploy processes – Test your project locally using the built-in runtime engine, then deploy to any supported test or production environment, with automated project archiving and deployment.

• Integrate standard and proprietary XML – Generate XML document schemas from external metadata (DTD or Schema) and map to or from any other supported document syntax.
• Integrate complex, multi-table database content – Generate database document schemas from DBMS catalog metadata, and map to or from any other supported document syntax.  Create multi-level, updatable views using a drag-and-drop editor, without DBA involvement.
• Support complex multi-format flat files – Generate flat file document schemas for single or multiple format flat files from fixed or delimited data examples, then map to or from any other supported document syntax.
• Integrate complex spreadsheet data – Generate spreadsheet document schemas from complex multi-tabbed spreadsheet examples, then create data transformations that operate on spreadsheet source and / or target data.  Integrate complex, multi-part spreadsheets with ease, or generate formatted spreadsheets based on output templates.
• Support standard and non-standard EDI – Use the built-in (*) X12 and EDIFACT EDI standards to generate standard EDI document schemas, or modify your schemas to accommodate partner exceptions to EDI standards.
• Support proprietary web services – Generate web service Consumers and Providers for both SOAP and REST, with or without attachments.  Attach web services to business processes to integrate application and data resources and transform request and response data.
• Integrate with proprietary applications – Connect with proprietary applications, including those developed in-house, using APIs, web services, or file, database, messaging, or database adapters.  Employ database or file monitors to detect application events and automate integration responses.

(*) Requires the EXTOL EDI Integrator Option.

• Regenerate objects from metadata and sample data – Respond to changes in data transformation source and target documents by regenerating document schemas from external metadata or sample data.  Or make smaller document changes directly, using the Schema Editor.
• Automate mapping changes – Automate modification of map rules caused by changes in source and target document schemas, using the powerful Migration Assistant and Smart Mapping accelerators.   Apply these automated tools to cut the time and cost needed to maintain and test mapping changes, so you can promote them to Production sooner.
• Extend business processes incrementally – Add new sub-processes, adapters, notifications, and other tasks to your business processes as you need them, in just minutes.  Test and modify iteratively, using the built-in runtime engine, until you achieve the modified behavior you desire.
• Configure mediation and adapter changes independently – Modify configurations for mediations, adapters, endpoints, and many other object types – in most cases, without business process side effects.   EXTOL’s loosely-coupled integration model facilitates reuse and rapid replacement of integration objects.
• Externalize platform and environment dependencies – Use global variables for named services, URLs, file system paths, and other environment-dependent settings, to eliminate platform- and environment-specific changes and save time when moving from Test to Production.

• Run “lights-out”– Spend less time managing operations by configuring processes to run without human intervention.  EXTOL middleware automatically activates processing based on schedules, data arrival, and other events, and can alert appropriate personnel when intervention is needed.
• Report exceptions automatically – Incorporate email notifications in processes, process templates, and global exit points to automate the reporting of exceptions.  Attach application data to facilitate identification and diagnosis of processing exceptions by your IT staff.
• Track and report on integration activity over time – Monitor and report system status, resource monitors, business processes, and process execution results, using the web-based EXTOL Dashboard.  Verify the integration status of orders, shipment notices, and other business transactions and drill-down on processing details.
• Analyze and diagnose processing exceptions– Browse and view detailed process and data logs using built-in auditing utilities.  Drill down on process details to view process task execution details, including input and output data.
• Automate routine backups – Maximize system availability and automate backups and data purging using Suspend / Resume and other callable server management functions.