TITLE: Enhance ESB and BPM solutions with complex data transformation and connectivity for System z HOST: Hi, and welcome to the Did you say Mainframe? podcast series. This is where we regularly interview IBM technical experts who can help you to understand important IBM mainframe hardware and software issues. I'm your host Sherrie Abshire. Today we re going to talk about WebSphere Transformation Extender and its role in SOA. Our guest today is Colin Taylor, the product marketing manager for the WebSphere Transformation Extender and WebSphere Adapter product family. Colin, it s great to have you here. SME: I m delighted to be here. HOST: Before we begin, I d like to mention to our listeners that there is a teleconference on the subject of today s podcast, which you can listen to for more details. I ll be giving out more information at the end of this podcast. Q) In a few words, What is WebSphere Transformation Extender? WebSphere Transformation Extender (or WTX for short) is a dedicated data transformation engine for application integration. It is a mature product in use today with bluechip Banks, Financial Services, Healthcare and Retail Commerce organisations around the world. A transformation engine accepts file documents or electronic messages as inputs, parses them using data dictionary like definitions, and transforms them into one or more output messages for onward routing to target applications, both internal or systems of external trading partners and suppliers. It can convert most any formatted content XML, and EDI like formats and does this without any coding or scripting by the developer. Instead the developer uses drag and drop technology and a library of pre-built functions to create processing rules similar to how you would use macros in your favorite spreadsheet application.
These rules can be used to validate the quality of the content, compute totals, and generate reports. This is a powerful and flexible multi purpose tool, capable of handling the most complex of data, as exhibited in EDI data, SAP Documents, and Industry Standard formats such as SWIFT. WTX is actually a family of products all based on the common universal transformation engine. It can run standalone in its own right, and has editions tailored to ESB, BPM, and B2B products in the WebSphere portfolio.. It comes in different editions each suited to a different role or environment, supports a range of platforms and has a range of optional Packs that accelerate solution delivery. Q) How does WebSphere Transformation add value in System z environments? It introduces a high degree of IT flexibility for IBM clients deploying to System z. WTX has editions for z/os, and Linux (RedHat and SUSE). It can be deployed In MVS batch store and forward scenarios or under the transactional control of CICS integrated with IMS and DB2, embedded into the processes of COBOL,C,JAVA applications. Another aspect it does not mandate a vendors database as a repository, all the assets are file based and can be organised and version controlled in your favorite code management system. Another compelling reason that concerns many is the proliferation of components to manage. WTX transformations can handle multiple variants and versions of a data structure in one transformation map file, avoiding code management headaches. Whilst some System Administration knowledge of System Z is required to configure memory requirements and logging and the like, the actual design phase is common for all platforms. Q) Could you please expand on how these capabilities aid application reuse? Yes, take Industry standards they are updated usually one, maybe twice a year. They come with implementation guidelines, and some with compliance mandates from regulatory bodies. For Example, the Single Euro Payments
Area or SEPA directive in the European community. And HIPAA EDI in the US for Healthcare. Where you have coded these rules into applications, or databases, you can end up spending excessive time on maintenance and testing and not on new projects. WTX protects applications from change and at the same time allow them to participate in new projects. For Example take Insurance applications. Many applications may have been written to an older format called AL3 which is a tag = value format. Now there are XML formats from ACORD, the organisation driving standards in Insurance. The cost of converting applications with WTX could hold back projects where as WTX can convert between the old and the new in a non invasive manner, and do it without coding. The applications may be third party sourced and the cost of buying licenses for new version prohibitive, or skills just not there anymore to enhance the application. WTX solves this problem enabling these applications to participate in new projects. Q) How does WebSphere Transformation Extender connect to existing applications? WTX has local file system support by default. This is handy for testing transformations thoroughly before moving to the connectivity phase. For System z, the most popular connectivity is via adapters for WebSphere MQ Messaging, FTP, and Native z/os support for File, Sequential file and VSAM and DB2. Q) What are WebSphere Transformation Extender Packs and how do they add value? WTX Industry Packs are optional solution development accelerators for industry standards and leading Enterprise Information Systems. They all contain prebuilt datadictionary templates for we call them type trees that are ready to use out of the box within the WTX Design Studio tools. Where applicable conversion mappings between old and new formats, XML and non XML are provided. And some packs have additional validation utilities, and look up files which
the client can use or customise. The EIS Packs such as for SAP will also have an adapter and importer tools. They add value by reducing the design time requirement to minor customizations and significantly avoid errors. They take away the hard work of validating hand coded templates against the guidelines ensuring content is sent once only, and not rejected and returned for a manual fix and resend. IBM refreshes the contents when standards evolve protecting investment. Customers have told us of significant year on year return on investment in just in maintenance reduction. Q) Colin, WebSphere Transformation Extender has been described as a universal transformation engine, could you please summarise why? Its features are universally applicable to all types of formatted data and all sizes of document. It has multiple deployment scenarios, batch store and forward under the transactional control of CICS integrated with IMS or DB2 embedded in COBOL,C,JAVA in house applications, embedded with J2EE Application Servers such as WebSphere Application Server or a third party server. For customers with mixed IT environments, The same transformation instructions can be executed on any engine on any supported platform Windows, Unix, Linuz z/os. The design phase is platform neutral, and testing can be independent of the connectivity adapters to be used on the execution platform. I call that universal applicability. Q) How does WebSphere Transformation Extender fit with SOA? WTX delivers a dedicated transformation service for SOA infrastructures. Where customers are using System Z for SOA projects, the recent announcement of WTX for Integration Servers edition is aimed at SOA. It provides WTX ready to install and deploy in event-driven scenarios with WebSphere ESB, WebSphere Message Broker, and business process driven with WebSphere Process Server products.
HOST: Thanks Colin, that was really interesting. SME: Thanks for giving me the opportunity to talk about WebSphere Transformation Extender. HOST: Well, that wraps up this podcast discussion. To find out more about the teleconference I mentioned earlier, please go to the description for this podcast at: http://www.ibm.com/software/os/systemz/podcasts/websphereon z/ There you will also find the URL for registering for the IBM Impact 2008 event which is being held in Las Vegas in April. Join us next time as we talk about another important mainframe topic. For now, this is Sherrie Abshire saying Thanks for listening.