Translating project requirements into Studio components
After identifying high-level goals for your integration project, you can start analyzing more specific aspects of the integration project and identifying the Studio components that you can use to accomplish your goals.
You can start by analyzing the following characteristics
of your integration project:
- From what source, or sources, do you want to obtain the data, and to what target do you want to transmit the data? These sources and targets (databases, FTP servers, HTTP servers, Email, etc) comprise the endpoints that are created as part of a project in Studio.
- In what format is the source data, and in what format is the required target data? Text-based files, including EDI formats, CSV, and other formats can be defined in Studio as a Flat File Schema that converts the data into the appropriate format for the Integration Appliance. In addition, a Flat File Schema can be used to produce data in a flat file format to be used outside of the Integration Appliance. XML-based data can be included in an integration project by uploading the appropriate XML Schemas (.xsd) or document type definitions (.dtd) to Studio.
- Does the data format or structure need to change from source to target, and if so, how does it need to change? Should some of the processing be based on the content itself?
Identifying these requirements provides the information needed to define (in Studio) one or more orchestrations that comprises a set of activities, including transformations on data. Transformations convert data from one format to another. For example converting Flat File data in a CSV (Comma Separated Values) format to XML data. Transformations can also suppress data, add data, alter datatypes, and perform calculations.