WebSphere DataPower Integration Appliance XI50

IBM® WebSphere® DataPower Integration Appliance XI50 is IBM’s hardware ESB, delivering common message transformation, integration, and routing functions in a network device, cutting operational costs and improving performance. By making on-demand data integration part of the shared Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) infrastructure, the XI50 is one of the few non-disruptive technologies for application integration.

Features and benefits include:

Powered by wirespeed transformation technology, the XI50 can be used to off-load XSLT processing, XPath routing, legacy-XML conversion, and other resource-intensive tasks from servers to reduce latency, improve throughput, and free up compute resources.

Diagram 1: XI50 Enterprise Message Bus

The XI50 can help protect and XML-enable mainframe systems, instantly connecting them to enterprise SOA and Web services.

Diagram 2: XI50 Mainframe

Easy to configure, operate, and own, the XI50 reduces the operational complexity of the IT environment while cutting costs and risks.

The XI50 can parse and transform arbitrary binary, flat text, and XML messages, including EDI, COBOL Copybook, ISO 8583, CSV, ASN.1, and ebXML. Unlike approaches based on custom programming, DataGlue technology uses a fully declarative, metadata-based approach.

The XI50 includes mature message-level security and access control functionality. Messages can be filtered, validated, encrypted, and signed, helping to provide more secure enablement of high-value applications. Supported technologies include WS-Security, WS-Policy, WS-SecurityPolicy, WS-ReliableMessaging, WS-SecureConversation, WS-Trust, SAML, and LDAP. The XI50 is a sealed network device for high reliability and increased security assurance.

The XI50 enables more robust and flexible business solutions, with streamlined and simplified configuration of common message processing scenarios - such as looping, branching, parallel processing, and retry.

Multiple synchronous and asynchronous transport protocols

Dynamically allocate access to services based on business priorities.

Extensive logging support, including iSCSI for connectivity to remote storage for off-device logging. The XI50 also includes non-repudiation support.

The XI50 features standards-based interfaces for broad, uniform connectivity across enterprise infrastructure.

The XI50 enables comprehensive "out-of-the-box" support for fast, easy-to-handle standard, non-standard, or off-standard, partner/vendor implementations.

The XI50 helps reduce the time, cost, risk, and complexity of traditional integration approaches.

Unlike approaches based on hard-coded middleware adapters, the XI50 uses a fully declarative, metadata-based approach. The unique technology enables data-oriented programming (DOP) paradigms to be employed without introducing bottlenecks. Easy-to-use visual tools are available to assist business analysts in configuring format descriptors, mappings, and message choreography.

Powered by robust technology built from the ground up with security in mind, the XI50 provides XML integration on a more secure foundation with the performance necessary for real-world applications. The XI50 can parse, filter, transform, route, and enforce access-control messages of disparate format at wirespeed. It also provides encryption and decryption, as well as digital signature signing and verification capabilities.