Introduction to integration

Integration capabilities

Semarchy xDM certifies golden data from source applications' data and allows applications to consume this golden data.

Integration with Semarchy xDM is performed in several ways:

  • Publishing source data in a data hub deployed by Semarchy xDM, and have the hub certify golden records from this data. You can also publish record deletion as well as perform duplicates management operations.

  • Consuming golden or master data from the data hub.

Semarchy xDM provides several integration interfaces:

  • A REST API, accessible from the Semarchy xDM application.

  • A SQL Interface, composed of a set of functions stored in the repository schema plus integration tables stored in the Data Location Schema.

Using these components, applications and middleware products can consume, publish and manage data in the data hub.

Publishers and consumers

In the context of integration, applications publishing source data into the hub are Publishers. Application consuming data from the hub are Consumers.

These roles are not exclusive. An application can publish data into the data hub and consume certified golden data from the hub to update its records.

For example, a business intelligence application is typically a consumer-only as it consumes only golden records for reporting purposes. An operational application may publish its contact information to the data hub for certification and update its contact information with the certified golden records.

We usually refer to the middleware tool or user-defined product used for publishing or consuming data as the middleware.

Publishers

This term refers to the original application from which the data originates, and not necessarily to the middleware tool or user-designed program actually doing the data movement. The publisher is typically an operational application such as a Customer Relationship Management (CRM), a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) or an Enterprise Resource Planner (ERP).

A middleware tool may be an Extract-Transform-Load (ETL), Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) or any other data integration product. It may also be a user-designed program or script implemented in SQL, Java, etc. The middleware tool or user-designed program communicates with the publisher to extract data and communicates with the data hub using the publishing methods to load this data.

Publishers identify applications pushing data into the hub. They are used in consolidation rules when merging records and should be declared in the model.

Consumers

Similarly to the publisher, this term refers to the applications consuming data from the hub. This consumption usually takes place via a middleware tool or a user-designed program using data consumption methods.