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gwilmer edited this page Jan 3, 2016 · 28 revisions

Metl User Guide

Copyright © 2015 JumpMind, Inc

Version @appVersion@

Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this Metl User Guide for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted in perpetuity, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph appear in all copies.

Preface

This user guide introduces Metl, a simple, web-based integration platform that allows for several different styles of data integration including file based Extract/Transform/Load (ETL), messaging, and remote procedure invocation via Web Services. This guide is intended for users, developers, and administrators who want to install the software, configure integrations, and manage its operation. Thank you to all the members of the open source community whose feedback and contributions helped us build better software and documentation. This version of the guide was generated on 2024-11-23.

Introduction

Metl is a simple, web-based integration platform that allows for several different styles of data integration including messaging, file based Extract/Transform/Load (ETL), and remote procedure invocation via Web Services. Metl was built to solve fairly simple day to day integration tasks without the need for custom coding, heavy infrastructure or high costs. It can be deployed in the cloud or in an internal data center, and was built to allow developers to extend it to fit their needs by writing their own components that can be included and leveraged by the existing Metl infrastructure.

System Requirements

Metl is written in Java and requires a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) Standard Edition (SE) or Java Development Kit (JDK) Standard Edition (SE). Most major operating systems and databases are supported. The minimum operating system requirements are:

  • Java SE - Runtime Environment or Development Kit version 8 or above

  • Memory - 1 (GB) available

  • Disk - 256 (MB) available

Metl is accessed from a web console, which requires one of the following supported web browsers:

  • Google Chrome 23 or newer

  • Internet Explorer 8 or newer

  • Mozilla Firefox 17 or newer

  • Safari 6 or newer

Overview

Metl is a web application. It can be deployed as a web application archive (war) file under an existing Servlet container (Tomcat, JBoss, Websphere, etc.) or can be deployed stand-alone as a war file deployed under a bundled Jetty Servlet container. See [installation] section for details.

Once installed, the web application (agent) is accessed via a web browser and is used to [design], [deploy] and [manage] integrations.

Integrations can be grouped or packaged into one or more projects. Projects are a means to logically group integrations together in some logical way. As an example, a project might contain all of the integrations in or out of a specific system. See [projects] for additional details.

Each project has a set of Resources, Models and Flows. Resources represent connections to physical endpoints where data is read from or written to. The following resource types are available in Metl:

  • Database - A jdbc connection to a jdbc compliant relational database

  • FTP - An FTP connection to a file system

  • SFtp - An SFtp connection to a file system

  • Local File System - A connection to a local file system

  • Web Resource - An HTTP connection to REST or SOAP based services

See [resources] for additional details.

Models - Data integrated with Metl can be structured or unstructured data. When dealing with Structured data, the structured data can be defined by modeling the data. Metl Models allow you to describe that structured data. Models can either be relational or hierarchical in nature. See [models] for additional details.

Flows are the integrations themselves. That is, flows allow the definition of data be retrieved from source systems, transformed, and written to target systems. Flows are graphical in nature and allow the developer to configure data movement. See [flows] for additional details.

Components - Flows are constructed of components connected by links that describe the path of data through the flow. The are various components available, and custom components can be built and integrated in to the existing Metl infrastructure.

Architecture

TODO

Why Metl?

  • Integrations can be configured in hours vs coding them in days or weeks

  • Metl is easy to install. Simply download the .war file and run

  • Metl is web based. No tools to install on each desktop. Deploy locally, in your data center or in the cloud

  • Metl doesn’t require heavy infrastructure. Any windows or linux box will do

  • Metl is open. No black box. Download the source. Write your own components if desired

  • Metl is proven in large integration scenarios

  • Metl is free. The entire toolset is open source under the GPL license

  • Metl is supported. JumpMind, Inc. provides professional support and services for any need

License

METL is free software licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 3.0. See http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html for the full text of the license. This project includes software developed by JumpMind (http://www.jumpmind.com/) and a community of multiple contributors. METL is licensed to JumpMind as the copyright holder under one or more Contributor License Agreements. METL and the METL logos are trademarks of JumpMind.

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