Technical Capabilities

In concert with the CIC Studio is a sophisticated any-to-any integration engine. This topic describes the different formats supported and the methods behind their transformation.

Supported formats include Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), Flat File, Database, Spreadsheet, and Extensible Markup Language (XML).

A Business Process engine is used to script activity and is integrated with transformation and adapter capability. The scripting language is capable of sequence, iteration, and condition constructs, and can be executed both synchronously and asynchronously.

EDI

CIC Studio supports the X12, EDIFACT, and TRADACOMS standards. This includes:

• Enveloping and de-enveloping capability
• Sending and receiving Functional Acknowledgements (For X12: 997, For EDIFACT: CONTRL)
• Validation of both source and target documents

In addition to sending and receiving EDI messages, CIC Studio also includes a powerful routing and pattern matching engine for determining how to process inbound and outbound EDI messages, as well as application (non-EDI) data.  The Studio provides tooling to make the job of dealing with EDI easier; there are tools or using sample EDI data to build configurations, as well as migration tools that ease the job of moving from one version of EDI to another.

Related topic: Uploading EDI Standards to the CIC Studio

Flat File

CIC Studio supports both fixed-length and delimited flat files, as well as both single- and multi-format types. No industry-standard metadata exists for describing flat files, therefore CIC Studio allows you to use a sample flat file to generate them.

Database

CIC Studio supports the ability to connect to and interact with relational databases via a type-4 Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) driver (native protocol pure Java).  Since a database must be available to the Cloud, the Cleo Agent can provide the ability to access a database across a firewall.

CIC Studio also has the capability to execute stored procedures and perform SQL-based interactions during transformations and in Business Processes. These SQL Access actions are capable of accepting and returning parameters.

Spreadsheet

CIC Studio supports the ability to read from and write to spreadsheets. The supported formats are XLS, XLSX, and XLSM. For transformation purposes, spreadsheet data is separated from formatting, as CIC Studio is concerned primarily with the data. References to actual spreadsheet files are maintained for formatting purposes, and transformation data is generated into formatted template workbooks when producing spreadsheets. Spreadsheets often contain mixtures of data in absolute locations and on one or more rows that exist in relative locations. No industry standard metadata exists for describing spreadsheets, therefore CIC Studio allows you to use a sample spreadsheet to generate it.

XML

CIC Studio supports the Extensible Markup Language (XML) derived from XSD. It parses and constructs XML documents using the JAXB standard.

JSON

CIC Studio supports the JSON syntax for translation/mapping that is supported by a metadata wizard capable of consuming sample data and automatically building the schema without manual creation. The feature also supports future data structure changes with an automatic update function that is also based on sample data.

Web Services

Web Services are used in Business Processes to obtain data. CIC Studio provides a wizard to specify or generate:

• requests and/or response Schemas
• Web Service and operation names
• remote address and port information

CIC Studio currently supports REST Web Services only. 

File System

CIC Studio can interact with the different file systems used in your integration ecosystem.  Cloud Monitors and Cloud Adapters support multiple interactions when files are detected in specified Endpoints.