Mountain View, CA November 25, 2002 Contivo, a provider of automated data integration solutions, today rolled out the latest version of its solution for modeling and integrating data within and beyond an enterprise's four walls by supporting legacy systems, packaged applications, industry standards, and open standards such as Web services.
The solution provider said that its Enterprise Integration Modeling (EIM) Solution 3.7 can reduce the cost and effort of implementing and maintaining integration projects by automating the creation and management of data transformations between applications through interface modeling, automated mapping and code generation.
To support the increasing number of companies recognizing the need to take a more holistic, enterprise approach to integration, Contivo said its solution gives customers a way to better understand and manage the meaning, or semantics, of their data and how that data relates to other data across and beyond the enterprise.
This visibility into the meaning of integration data provides customers with information to help define and manage complex integration projects.
"By automating the transformation of data between applications, Contivo's model-based approach to integration provides companies a means to manage complex data integration projects and achieve a more streamlined business process," said Dave Hollander, Contivo's chief technology officer. "The key value of Contivo's integration modeling technology is that it introduces reuse and automated code generation into the traditionally manual effort of data integration projects thereby reducing the spend on repetitive coding and redundant connections."
The EIM solution includes two components. Analyst is a graphical modeling and mapping tool that provides customers with a graphical interface to visually create and maintain semantic models and to create and customize data maps that are derived from these models. The EIM Server is a semantic-based metadata repository that provides a centrally managed repository that enables customers to share models and maps, dramatically reducing the ongoing costs of maintaining integration projects.
The two components interact to automatically model data interfaces and ultimately combine the models to create data maps and data transformations.
Key features in the new version of EIM include Legacy Integrator, a standalone Java utility that is integrated into the solution and that supports flat-file-to-XML and XML-to-flat-file processing and transformation. Supported flat file structures include COBOL Copybooks, EDI files, SAP IDoc files, delimited (CSV) and fixed-length record files.
A schema namespace editor enables users to edit and preserve the XML Schema namespace prefix within the target document of transformations, a necessary feature to support XML transformation for business processing. In-line comments for mapping rules allow users to include comments when defining mapping rules, enabling teams to retain contextual information in the body of the transformation code.
New map simulation features provide an integrated design, test and debug environment with the ability to simulate transformations, trace rules and variables for "debugging" and view input and output test data. This function supports testing either XSLT or Java transformations and ensures that maps are accurate and will work inside the runtime environment as expected prior to deployment.
Contivo's Enterprise Vocabulary Manager offers tools and reports to assist in managing and maintaining a semantic vocabulary and its relationships to the modeled interfaces. Available reports include semantic concept usage reports and a fit-gap analysis capability to assist in defining and maintain canonical data models.
Finally, the solution enables users to generate Java transform code based on maps defined within Analyst that can be deployed and invoked from within BEA WebLogic Integration.
Pricing for the Contivo EIM Solution 3.7 starts at $50,000, and the solution is available immediately.
In other Contivo news, the company announced recently that Larry Lenhart had joined as president and CEO, taking over from Indra Mohan, who remains with the company as chairman of the board.
Lenhart brings more than 18 years of management experience to Contivo. Prior to joining the company, he served as the president and CEO of CAT Technology, which was acquired by BlueStar Solutions. At BlueStar Solutions, Lenhart served as the executive vice president of strategy and corporate development. Before joining CAT, Lenhart was a managing partner at Deloitte & Touche and a vice president of operations at Cadis, now a part of i2 Technologies.
Finally, the software company reached an agreement with electronics industry e-standards consortium RosettaNet for the addition of Contivo's integration modeling solution to the RosettaNet Developer Tools Library. Contivo said its EIM technology will assist with partner interface process (PIP) deployment and migration, thereby reducing the implementation time for companies using RosettaNet standards as part of their integration efforts.
