About X12

X12 is an EDI (electronic data interchange) standard, developed for the electronic exchange of machine-readable information between businesses. 

The range of markets covered by X12 is vast and includes:

• Healthcare
• Insurance
• Transportation
• Finance

The standard is developed and maintained by the American National Standards Institute.

Transformer and X12

Transformer dramatically shortens the time taken to build validation and mapping solutions involving X12 standards.

The analyst using Transformer creates solutions directly in the intuitive Design-Time GUI. There is no coding stage, even when the required data transformation is highly complex. Projects remain clearly articulated and easy to maintain, and removing the old-fashioned ‘spec handover’ from analyst to developer eliminates a major source of risk and delay.

Transformer’s message definition libraries captures all the details of complex standards in a business-friendly way, making them ideal for real-world project needs. Transformer’s libraries provide user-friendly names and full descriptions for all fields, components, and data range values, and fully supports cross-validation rules.  

Users create mappings very easily in Transformer. For example, copying a field from the source to the target message just takes a simple ‘drag and drop’ action – Transformer automatically takes care of any reformatting required between the source and target syntax. To handle more complex mappings, Transformer provides a huge range of ready-made ‘mapping action’ building blocks. These can include conditions, which can in turn be combined into complex logic. So even really complex solutions can be created at lightning pace.

You can also run a test on each new ‘line’ of a mapping or validation as soon as it has been added, moving the testing process as far upstream as possible, and ensuring high quality from the very start. Transformer also provides powerful regression testing facilities to help ensure that future standards changes do not adversely impact existing solutions.

You can learn more about all of these Transformer features here

Deploy anywhere 

Transformer’s simple API and its range of specialised service builders allow solutions to be deployed rapidly into any integration architecture, including OSGi, development frameworks such as Java or .NET, RESTful service containers and traditional Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)/Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) architectures.

Transformer is especially appealing to Red Hat Fuse clients thanks to its deep integration with Camel – the ability to update the Camel Exchange, Header or Body at runtime and share data sources. Trace has created the ability to build an OSGi bundle that can talk to your Camel routes and deploy to Karaf, as well as the ability to run inside a SpringBoot container. And the best part – it all deploys and runs seamlessly on Red Hat OpenShift using the Fuse Integration Services (FIS).

Summary

Transformer offers customers, service providers, and application vendors the tools required to manage message transformations using any EDI standard. 

• Eliminate coding — Build models with business logic and deploy directly
• Create mappings easily — Drag and drop or choose from ready-built mappings
• Use ready-built standards libraries — Pick from constantly updated, comprehensive libraries
• Test as you build — Debug quickly and easily without affecting the production environment
• Maintain more easily — Model-based approach highlights areas impacted by changing standards
• Deploy anywhere — Each deployment is independent and thread-safe