HiT Software, a leader in database access, integration and replication, today announced Allora 6.0, the newest version of HiT Software’s full-featured data transformation product designed to bridge heterogeneous relational databases with XML and structured text files. Allora 6.0 adds key functionality for data traceability that helps industries improve their understanding of data relationships and track data mapping design prior to transformation. Also new to Allora are enhancements that offer greater scripting flexibility and reduce effort in managing transformations.

“Many industries face a daunting task of managing data traceability and compliance, and software providers need to be flexible in supporting those requirements,” said Giacomo Lorenzin, CEO, HiT Software, Inc. “One of the ways to support compliance is to address traceability at the point of data change, particularly when data is transformed from one file format to another. In the case of healthcare, the FDA and the European Union demand traceability—likewise in financial markets, where fiscal responsibility is now a heightened concern. We are pleased to offer new features in Allora that provide improved facilities for managing data design and data mapping. We can assure businesses that, when moving data between XML and any relational database using Allora, they have complete transparency of data change.”

“As a solutions provider for various governmental entities, we are highly sensitive to the requirements they face for compliance, reporting and corrective actions,” said Wayne Parker, Engineering Professional Services Group Manager at Maricom Systems, Inc. “It is imperative for us to provide a solution we are confident will support regulatory requirements, and at the same time perform in a reliable and scalable manner. HiT Software’s Allora data transformation product proved to be able to cost-effectively provide transformation design tracking between XML and relational databases. This is a critically important capability for regulated businesses.”

“Managing data within the constraints of a regulated financial market presents some specific challenges,” said Bernard Simon, Manager, IT Department, Luxembourg Stock Exchange. “Allora has provided a solid foundation to manage transformations between inbound XML files and our Sybase database system, and new features added to Allora 6.0 will help us continue to provide the data consistency, reliability and transparency necessary to conform to industry regulations.”

Allora is a richly featured software product designed to graphically provide mapping and transformation between any relational database and XML or structured text files. Allora is used today to automatically move inbound XML data from schemas such as HL7, ACORD and JusticeXML into database fields, eliminating hours of application developer time to write and edit scripting. For organizations that share data externally, Allora is the perfect solution to transform relational data into XML, making it useful to any web-enabled application or system. Allora provides a graphical Mapping Designer interface, sample mapping files and a runtime engine, allowing IT staff to create and change mappings on the fly without having to recompile code.

New Features in Allora 6.0

Allora now enables users to graphically generate reports that expose data mapping design. Data mapping design can be evaluated and shared among various groups for approval and tracking purposes. This is a critical function for regulated businesses where data accuracy and changes are tightly controlled, and helps retain information properly for auditing and corrective actions.
A new graphical representation of data relationships, exposed through a diagrammatic view of tables, is available. This new view reduces time to examine and approve data management decisions.
Users can now customize data and datetime formats during marshalling and unmarshalling, improving data accuracy.
Allora 6.0 offers new features that help reduce time and effort in completing complex transformations. In situations where organizations need to incorporate special scripting based in Java within the transformation process, Allora now offers reusable sample code to invoke external Java-written functions within Allora and help reduce the time to debug Java code.
Allora has added a more streamlined way to manage text file imports, through a new option to selectively eliminate text file headers and footers, reducing transformation time and administrative management.