Tuesday, January 20, 2009

[Pub] Data transformation in an SOA

I published a german on article on JAXCenter about data transformation in Service Oriented Architecture. When different applications talk to each other, you must find a suitable data format which all applications can interpret. For the most cases XML is the first choice, because there is a wide range of tool support and additional standards, like Schema Editors, XPath and the like.

In this article I give an overview about the Open Source Framework Smooks, which can be used for data transformation in SOAs. Smooks provide some interesting features:

  • Data Transformation (XML, CSV, EDI, Java, JSON,..) and custom transformers
  • Java Binding from any data source (CSV, EDI, XML,..)
  • Huge message processing by providing concepts like split, transform or route message fragments. You can also route fragments to different destinations, like JMS, File or databases
  • Message Enrichment
Above mentioned attributes/features are also ideal candiates where an Enterprise Service Bus can help. Rather existing Open Source ESBs, like Mule or JBoss ESB can profit from a technology like Smooks. In last part of the article I describe the Smooks extension for Mule which provides:
  • Smooks Transformer for Mule. The transformation logik is done in Smooks
  • Smooks Router for Mule. The routing logik can be configured in Smooks

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