An Introduction To Low-code Data Integration Tools

It is hardly news that in their day-to-day operations, businesses today generate truckloads of data.  Irrespective of its industry, a typical business employs numerous applications and on-premise systems to store enterprise data. Every business activity produces data, whether it is marketing, shipping, billing and financial transactions, or research and testing, and managing customer relations. Simply put, data is the backbone of any business. Producing all this data, however,  is pointless if it is not adequately analyzed and available where it is needed most. This is where data integration using low-code comes into it.

According to research by Forrester, the top 5 low-code use cases are: 

• Customer-facing applications
• Business process/workflow applications
• Web and/or mobile front ends 
• Complete mobile applications
• Administrative apps for gathering and tracking in addition to reporting data. 

In the Forrester survey, John Rymer, VP, Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, points out that these use cases all have one thing in common: “they all rely heavily on integration.” What’s more, delivering applications is an extremely intensive process. It involves integrating both on the front and back as well as integrating with systems, data centers, cloud sources. More importantly, in any integration project, your data integration tool often dictates whether you succeed or fail. 

This article introduces the LANSA Integrator, strategic middleware that provides tools and services for all data integration needs. 

What Can LANSA Integrator Do? 

LANSA Integrator is strategic middleware that provides tools and services that enable: 

• Application-to-application data exchanges. 
• Business-to-business document transfer and data interchanges. 
• Manual data integration processes automation. 
• Simplified data integration solution design and reduced development effort. 

Integrator provides the data transformation, transport services, and infrastructure that can assist developers in building integration solutions. It also simplifies integration design by providing the tools you need to receive, extract, transform, and send data. Developers only need to define the data, the transformation rules, and choose a data transport. After that, Integrator takes care of the detailed work that ensures the data is in the right format and reaches its destination successfully.

Integrator also supports multiple data formats. These include XML, EDI, text, video, SMS, email, Microsoft Excel workbooks, and PDF files as well as relational databases. In addition, Integrator includes services for data transformation, communications, email, and messaging, and web services. Interface tools and utilities that complement these services are another part of the Integrator package. 

Developers can use Integrator services to transform data from one format to another in their integration applications. It supports multiple data transport methods to move your data. These transport methods include HTTP, FTP, SFTP, Web services, and message queue software.  Finally, any application can call Integrator’s services using simple APIs.

Is Integrator a Flexible Solution?

Some of your customers, suppliers, or partners may use XML or EDI to exchange data. Others may use more generic formats like spreadsheets or text files. In either use case, Integrator’s flexibility allows you to choose from an array of many formats to satisfy any data transformation and integration requirements.

How can you use Integrator? 

LANSA Integrator provides a productive toolset for data integration between applications and sending data to/from customers, suppliers and partners. It also includes services developers can use to manage integration interfaces, call upon communications protocols and transform data from one format to another. 

Integrator’s services for transforming and transporting data make it the “Swiss Army Knife” of data integration. In other words, any time developers confront a situation requiring data exchange and/or transformation, there is an Integrator service that can simplify the task. 

Here are some examples of how you could use Integrator: 

• Send orders as XML, text, and email, as well as EDI format to a manufacturer automatically.
• Transfer files securely from desktop or laptop computers to remote servers.
• Send data from a mobile device to an application running on a server.
• Generate SMS text messages to a mobile device describing the status of orders or deliveries in real-time.
• Connect a Java-based credit card application to an order entry system.
• Integrate back-office applications using data formatted as XML and sent via IBM WebSphere MQ messaging services.
• Provide PDF documents, secured with digital certificates and password-protected, sent via email for contract negotiations and also agreements.
• Provide Web service interfaces to existing line-of-business applications.
• Send procurement documents to suppliers and receive acknowledgments from suppliers.
• Receive a text file via FTP, convert it to a PDF and send the PDF as an email attachment

Are You Ready To Integrate With LANSA?

Low-code solutions help businesses to keep up with the pace of change. In addition to accelerating product delivery, low-code integration can significantly improve hard business metrics like your ROI. You can also save costs by reusing APIs to open new revenue streams. 

LANSA Integrator is a low code solution that moves data between diverse platforms and applications. It manages data transformation, email, communication, messaging, and SOAP, as well as REST web services. For more information on how you can integrate with LANSA, contact us.