XAware has announced the creation of an open source project and the availability of XAware 5, open source data integration software that increases the productivity of development teams. XAware transcends existing data integration offerings with its ability to “service enable” data for reusable real-time connection to applications and business processes. XAware 5 is available for immediate download under the widely used open source GPLv2 license at the community site: www.xaware.org.

XAware provides software developers with the ability to synchronize and access data in real-time, convert and migrate data, and provide bi-directional data access for applications and business processes from multiple external data sources. In addition, data views and mashups can be made available to consuming applications through multiple mechanisms, including SOA Web services, SOAP, REST and Java API. This ability to service-enable data allows application developers to create more cost-effective and flexible software solutions. XAware product components include:

• The Eclipse-based XAware Designer – a visual drag-and-drop, wizard-based IDE that speeds the development of XAware-powered applications;

• XAware Engine, built on the Spring Framework – a high-performance, scalable, dynamic data integration and data services execution engine.

With XAware 5 Open Source, XAware also introduces development through the XAware Community Open Innovation Process. Designed to facilitate open collaboration and innovation, the XAware Community Open Innovation Process will provide greater visibility and encourage cooperation by all participants in the project. As part of its mission to be an active participant in the broad open source community, XAware will also partner with other open source projects, including MySQL.

XAware’s multi-purpose (ETL, EAI, EII) software offers developers a broad set of capabilities for their data integration projects. In addition, XAware’s metadata driven approach simplifies data integration challenges, reduces infrastructure costs and increases reuse.

“The core value of all SOAs is the data. Without a mechanism for simplifying complex information structures and semantics into logical groupings that can serve the architecture, then SOAs will never achieve their potential,” said David Linthicum, managing partner of ZapThink, LLC. “XAware is the only open source data abstraction tool that allows the user to create a logical database before linking existing physical data stores to it. This unique ability to ‘service-enable’ data is a core requirement to build a SOA ’s both agile and cost effective. XAware’s common view of enterprise data is an important differentiator and a concept that almost all SOAs will require in order to produce long-term strategic value.”