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gwilmer edited this page Nov 10, 2018 · 28 revisions

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.

Overview

Metl is a web application. It can be deployed as a web application archive (war) file to an application server (i.e. Tomcat, JBoss, Websphere) 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 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.

Projects contain Flows, Models and Resources.

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.

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

See flows for additional details.

Models provide structure to your data. When dealing with structured data, the data can be defined by modeling. Metl Models allow you to describe your data. Models can either be relational or hierarchical in nature. See models for additional details.

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

  • Directories - Connections to file systems. Local, FTP, SFTP and SMB are all supported

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

  • Mail Session - An SMTP connection that can be used to send and receive email

  • Subscribe - A connection to a JMS queue

See resources for additional details.

Use Cases

  • Flat File Data Integrations

  • RDBMS Data Integrations

  • Pub / Sub (Queue based) Data Integrations

  • API / Service Based Data Integrations

Why Metl?

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

  • Common infrastructure code all taken care of (reading, writing, formatting, parsing, threading, etc.)

  • Easy to install. Simply download the .war file and run

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

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

  • Open. No black box. Download the source. Write your own components if desired

  • Proven in large integration scenarios

  • Supported. JumpMind, Inc. provides professional support and services for any need for both the open source and commercial versions of Metl

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

License

METL is available in both an open source and commercial offering. The open source version is free software licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 3.0. The commercial version is licensed by JumpMind as part of a Support Subscription Agreement from JumpMind. See GPL License and Metl Commercial for details. This project includes software developed by JumpMind 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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