10/20/2003

HiT Software says new Allora support for WebSphere, Eclipse, and Microsoft XDR environments allows these platform developers to rapidly integrate XML data with relational databases. The Allora family includes Java and Windows tools that give developers dynamic XML import and export access to relational databases.

In the past, developers have been required to write time-consuming, application specific XML parsing and transformation code in order to import and export XML data with their databases. HiT says the new Allora releases make these extensive coding requirements unnecessary, and also deliver significant performance and functionality enhancements.

jAllora v3.5 adds integration support for WebSphere Studio and Eclipse development environments to complement existing support for Borland JBuilder, Oracle JDeveloper, and Sun Java Studio. New wizards for WebSphere Studio and Eclipse environments let developers launch the jAllora Mapper application in order to declare transformations, import jAllora run-time java classes, and embed source code for import and export of XML data with relational databases.

winAllora v3.2 adds direct support for Microsoft XML Data-Reduced (XDR) format for data type definitions. Now, in addition to XML schema and DTD support, HiT says, the winAllora Mapper application allows developers to graphically link XDR elements and attributes to relational database table columns. "This enables run-time, bi-directional data transformation by the winAllora engine between XDR data and relational data," the company said. "winAllora v3.2 adds intelligent use of prepared SQL statements to optimize performance for database record inserts, updates and deletions."

According to HiT, the new jAllora v3.5 OVLT API optimizes import and export of data within very large tables and XML documents. "This new API increases performance by an order of magnitude while minimizing local and database server resource requirements."

jAllora v3.5 adds full XML Path Language support, which allows developers to access relational data via XML-based qualified path references and precludes any specific database structure or catalog knowledge. XPath is also a foundational component for XQuery support. Also added with this new release are extended Web service APIs for flexible remote data access.

When automatically building databases from XML schemas, jAllora v3.5 now defines necessary primary and foreign keys for optimal transformation performance and referential data integrity for access. New mapping support optionally allows greater external transformation constraints without altering source XML schemas.

"Our goal for this latest release of the Allora products has been to drive better integration with the development environments," said Giacomo Lorenzin, CEO and President of HiT Software. "By enabling XML access to relational databases from IDE environments, developers substantially gain productivity, which translates into greater ROI for their companies."

The Allora products support all XML data formats and major database platforms.