DataDirect® Data Integration Suite Quick Start

The products included in the DataDirect Data Integration Suite — Stylus Studio 2009 XML Enterprise Suite, DataDirect XQuery, and DataDirect XML Converters — allow you to easily build applications to manage today's data integration challenges. From querying relational data, converting data in numerous non-XML formats to XML, to transforming that data to PDF and HTML, to updating databases and generating code for Java and .NET, DataDirect Data Integration Suite has the power and flexibility you need.

This quick start identifies resources that will give you some ideas about how to use the tools of the DataDirect Data Integration Suite in your enterprise. For specific information about using a particular tool or API, see the product documentation for that component.

What Do You Want to Do?

Getting started with the DataDirect Data Integration Suite is easy - it's just a matter of understanding the problem you need to tackle. We've compiled a short list of common scenarios our users have encountered that show how DataDirect Data Integration Suite products were able to help:

Learn About XML Data Integration

DataDirect is happy to offer a weekly webinar to introduce you to the different components of the DataDirect Data Integration Suite. Drop by and learn how you can use our tools to solve a real-world scenario. Topics covered in this webinar include

An introduction to working with XML files in Stylus Studio

Accessing and integrating relational data as XML

Converting non-XML files - including CSV and EDI - to XML

Using visual drag-and-drop features of Stylus Studio to ease data integration tasks

Integrating XQuery generated in Stylus Studio in a Web services environment

At the end of the Webinar, you'll have the opportunity to ask questions about integrating XML, EDI, and flat file data in traditional and SOA environments. See you Thursday!

Create and Integrate Web Services

XQueryWebService is a framework that allows you to expose an XQuery as a Web service. In this example, you'll see how you can use tools in the DataDirect Data Integration Suite to build powerful data services that query, aggregate, and update multiple data sources.

http://www.xquery.com/examples/web-service-example/

DataDirect Data Integration Suite can help you design, test, and implement Web services, leveraging the power of XQuery to query an incoming request as XML, and query relational databases or XML configuration files that are available to the implementation running on the middle tier, producing the XML needed for a response.

http://www.xquery.com/web_services/

Web Services and Heterogeneous Data Integration

IT organizations have been dealing with a variety of data sources for a long time: relational databases, mainframes, text files, and XML documents, to name a few. SOA and Web services have earned acceptance as a solid approach for systems management - one that allows for the broad reuse of existing software assets, provides a sound architectural model for the federation of disparate IT systems, and supports the automation of abstract business processes via a range of programming paradigms.

Use XML to create logical views of a variety of physical data sources

Aggregate XML documents with relational data

Consume Web services in XQuery

Expose XQuery as data services

http://www.xquery.com/developers/webinars/data-integration/july-24-2008.html

Join XML and Relational Data

One of the main challenges facing many IT organizations today is managing data from disparate sources and in different formats. XML has emerged as a technology that is helping to bridge the divide between legacy systems and current technologies. See how you can use the tools in the DataDirect Data Integration Suite to join XML and relational data.

Integrate XML Data from Your Database

Increasingly, XML is stored in relational databases as structured XML. Some applications will continue to shred XML into a relational format or store XML as CLOB values. Other applications can now take advantage of relational databases that support a native XML data type to represent an XML document or XML document fragment. See how you can use DataDirect Data Integration Suite tools to query XML stored as character data and query XML stored as XML here:

Access LDAP Directory Services

DataDirect XQuery provides an easy and efficient way to aggregate data available in a variety of data sources and formats, like relational databases, XML documents, Web service responses, flat files, EDI files, and more. But data storage, with myriad protocols, data stores, and formats, can present a challenge for even sophisticated data integration tools. Learn about using DataDirect XQuery to access LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) directory services:

Generate Non-XML Files

XQuery excels at querying and transforming XML, but did you know that you can also use it to generate a non-XML result? You can! Learn how easy it is to use DataDirect XQuery to leverage DataDirect XML Converters to create a comma-separated values file from XML:

Convert EDI Messages to XML

Conversion modules in the DataDirect Data Integration Suite are able to handle many EDI dialects easily - X12, HL7, and others - managing and converting transaction sets, segments, elements, and code lists to XML. DataDirect XML Converters, one of the products in the Data Integration Suite, use their embedded EDI dictionary to help you create syntactically pure and semantically accurate EDI, converting to/from XML or diagnosing problems with incoming and outgoing EDI data.

X12 — Example

http://xmlconverters.com/tutorials/translate-x12-to-xml.html

HL7 — Supported Standards

http://www.xmlconverters.com/standards/hl7/

Custom EDI Formats — Example

http://xmlconverters.com/tutorials/custom-edi-message-types.html

Convert Proprietary Files to XML

Companies still frequently use proprietary flat file formats to exchange or circulate information, so relying on standards like EDI is not always an option. But you can rely on tools in the DataDirect Data Integration Suite to help you manage conversion of proprietary file formats to XML.

Convert Tab-Delimited Files to EDI

The DataDirect Data Integration Suite has numerous tools to help you convert all sorts of file formats to XML. But what about converting one file format (say, tab-delimited) to another (in this case, EDI)?

Integrate and Transform Office Documents

Office documents have always been a rich source of data, but their proprietary binary formats have made them all but unusable to businesses seeking to integrate them in their processes. New office document standards like the OpenDocument Format (ODF) and Office Open XML (OOXML) are allowing tools like those in the DataDirect Data Integration Suite to unlock office documents' enormous potential.

Additional Resources

In addition to this quick start, consider visiting the following pages to learn about the many additional resources - video demonstrations, user forums, product documentation, developer blogs, and more - for the products in the DataDirect Data Integration Suite.

Quick Start: DataDirect® Data Integration Suite