Xcalia Intermediation Core™ 5.1

Since release 5.1, Xcalia Intermediation Core™ (XIC) provides unprecedented ease in composite application development within an SOA.

XIC 5.1 allows composite applications developed in Java, .Net and BPEL to access and update heterogeneous enterprise information as easy as possible. XIC 5.1 supports standard APIs like JDO 2.0 (defined through the JCP) and SDO 2.01 (defined by OASIS) as well as Data Access Service (DAS).

XIC Data Access Service (DAS)

XIC 5.1 now exposes a generic web services CRUD interface to allow for more interoperability and easier access for clients using any technology. XIC can now be used by any web service consumer programming language like BPEL or workflow engines.

The solution enables the following architecture:

• The DAS is connected to the various data sources
  • It defines the mapping between these data sources and a logical business model
  • The DAS publishes that logical business model through a generic Web Service (deployed using JAX-WS 2.1)
• The client application, requests a datagraph from the DAS
  • The query is defined using a simple and standardized universal query language
  • The query is defined against the logical business model published by the DAS
  • The data is retrieved as a standardized SDO datagraph (the data exchange between the DAS and the SDO client is based on XML and is standardized by SDO 2).
• The client application remotely works on the SDO datagraph
  • The XIC SDO implementation provides convenient APIs to manipulate the SDO datagraph
  • The XIC SDO implementation transparently manages the ChangeHistory (dirty tracking) as defined by the SDO standard
• Upon completion of the business transaction, the client application sends the SDO datagraph back to the XIC DAS server
  • The DAS will synchronize the relevant data sources, of whatever type (RDBMS, XML, ODBMS, Mainframe or generic Service), in an optimistic transaction.

SDO 2.01 support

Since 5.1, XIC is now compliant with SDO 2.01.

The Service Data Object (SDO) standard has been elaborated within the Open SOA standard committee (www.osoa.org). Since March 2007, SDO 2 has been transferred to the OASIS organization (www.oasis-opencsa.org)  in order to improve its interoperability with other standards for Web Services.

Microsoft .Net support

Starting with version 5.1 XIC comes with a .Net client for SDO 2 in addition to the already available Java client.

Microsoft .Net applications written in C#, VisualBasic or any other .Net compliant programming language can now rely on XIC to manipulate the various Enterprise Data Sources supported by XIC: RDBMS (Oracle, MS SQL Server, Sybase, MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc...), OODBMS (Versant), XML messages or streams, Web Services, Mainframe transactions, packaged applications (SAP, Siebel) and so on.

Cost-based execution plans

XIC 5.1 now comes with an execution plan cost calculation framework, with several out-of-the-box cost calculators as well as the ability for clients to plug in their own execution plan cost calculators. This enables very effective and load-balancing execution plan selection in the face of real-time changing enterprise conditions.

Enhanced natural language-based service method behavior syntax

As a result of feedback received after our initial release of XIC's dynamic composition capabilities, we have revamped the syntax of SMBL, our service method behavior language, to follow a more natural language-based, third party narrative style.

Download XIC 5.x now and have a look by yourself!

Other improvements coming with version 5.1

• Mapping of data services
• Improvements on collection management. New methods added like clear(), removeAll()
• Minor improvements on the service method behavior language
• Support for simple queries on primary key fields    
• Mapping of transactional methods (explicit business transaction demarcations)
• Support of default values and user context values for service methods parameters
• EJB invoker
• Support for EJB 3.0
• Compatibility with JBoss v4.0.4, Jonas 4.8.4, Sun Java System Application Server (v9 Update 1ML), Bea Weblogic Server 8.2
• Web Services invoker
• Support for Apache Axis 2
• Bean return type: support for both Axis and Axis 2
• JCA invoker
• Improvements for managed and non-managed environments
• XIC Core Improvements
• New property “lido.jdo.nonTransactionalGetObjectByIdState” to specify the behavior of getObjectById() without a transaction
• Apply current activated fetch plans during navigation (getObjectById)
• Optimistic check when batching is disabled
• Warning if optimistic update is disabled by configuration
• Definitions of field behaviors are inherited in subclasses
• Optimistic check on embedded fields and references
• Default value of property “lido.assumeAnonymousAsDatastore” option changed from false to true
• Implicit loading of synthetic fields with the identity
• Error raised when a field in a persistence-capable subclass is overridden
• Split of IdentityProvider interfaces into client and server specific ones
• Synthetic fields must have a mapper that specifies the type of the field (java.lang.Object is not assumed anymore)