expressor illustrator  expressor illustrator is a Windows desktop-based visual integration flow design application geared at ETL developers who are responsible for designing and testing a data integration application. It relies on image and network files created within expressor administrator, and is implemented as a plug-in for Microsoft Visio that provides a drag-and-drop construction interface using pre-built shapes.
expressor illustrator allows developers to leverage a flexible user interface to drag-and-drop pre-built shapes to build an integration flow. A developer begins by checking out a project and downloading the relevant image and network files that describe data sources, record structures, and parallel processing methods. They then visually create data integration projects consisting of one-or-more expressor drawings, using the pre-built shapes and by writing data processing instructions using expressor datascript, a powerful scripting language based on the widely adopted Lua language with expressor extensions. expressor drawings are assembled from a collection of prewritten components that perform tasks such as:
expressor illustrator also features a powerful point-and-click interface for the collate operator that allows standard summary calculations to be easily configured in only a few steps. Users can automatically generate code for summary calculations—such as for calculating the standard deviation within a group of records; more complex calculations can be developed by writing procedural processing logic in datascript. expressor illustrator supports remote development, allowing a user to run a drawing under development on a remote expressor processor for testing purposes.
expressor illustrator includes an editor where developers can leverage the datascript language to define the business logic.
Developers can write business and transformation rules from within expressor illustrator that define the processes to be applied to the data when creating the fields in an output record. Developers can also test their processing logic using synthetic debugging, a mechanism to exercise the rules in expressor illustrator with test values, without connecting to the physical data. expressor illustrator provides feedback during the development process through the use of color-coding and a messages window. Complex data transformations can be described through the expressor datascript language, and scripts can be either embedded directly in the drawing shape or written in an external file and called from embedded scripting statements. A developer can select from a pick-list of existing functions or create new ones, which can be shared across the enterprise. While developers do not need to view the actual data, the network file may still point to production or historical test data, which can then be used in developing and debugging the application. When the application runs, the developer cannot view the data unless the developer is assigned a privileged role that allows for data viewing. Roles-based user segmentation provides organizations with maximum flexibility for controlling access and security to critical enterprise information. To see expressor illustrator in action, please view the online demo. |
