Workbench

IRI Workbench™ is the free graphical user interface (GUI) and integrated development environment (IDE) for all IRI software products. Running on Windows and Linux clients, IRI Workbench combines the proven performance of IRI software engines with the familiar job design and management facilities of Eclipse. 

IRI Workbench features metadata creation, conversion, discovery, and application wizards to help you generate, deploy, and manage the simple data definition files (DDF) and job scripts common to all IRI software.

IRI Workbench includes purpose-driven wizards to build new jobs for：

• very large database extraction (E) using IRI FACT 
• data transformation (T), loading (L), and reporting using IRI CoSort 
• DW ETL and database reorg using FACT and CoSort 
• data and database migration, replication, or federation using IRI NextForm or CoSort 
• data encryption and masking using IRI FieldShield or CoSort 
• test data generation jobs using IRI RowGen or CoSort

Within the wizards and dialogs are also data mapping, MDM, and rule application facilities. Each created or imported job produces one or more standalone job scripts or configuration files to drive the above tasks.

Modify jobs with GUI components or a syntax-aware editor. Execute from the GUI, local or remote system command line, a batch script, or API call.

IRI job scripts are simple, portable text files. Run them anywhere that the back-end IRI software product is licensed. The scripts' data and job definitions all use the shared metadata of the CoSort Sort Control Language (SortCL) 4GL program.

Scripts and metadata managed in the IRI Workbench are easy to search and share with built-in Eclipse functionality. Free Eclipse plug-ins like GIT and SVN support team sharing, version control, and metadata lineage and impact analysis.

Eclipse Facilities

One of the most powerful aspects of the IRI Workbench GUI is that it is built on Eclipse™.

The Eclipse Integrated Development Environment (IDE) gives IRI CoSort, IRI Fast Extract (FACT), IRI FieldShield, IRI RowGen, and IRI NextForm users：

• A familiar, common GUI, and a shared metadata, job, and worfklow management system.
• The power to combine products in purpose-driven ways (e.g., the offline reorg wizard).
• Direct browsing and data movement for local and remote source files and on-line RDBs.
• Ergonomic features like perspective control and text search (e.g., for metadata impact analysis).
• Plug-in interactions for BI/analytics (e.g., BIRT), metadata asset control (e.g. EGit), data modeling, etc. 
• Access to Hadoop (HDFS), mainframe, semi-structured, and unstructured data sources.
• The opportunity to use Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) modules from providers like W2O2.

For example, the Eclipse data tools platform (DTP) plug-in gives IRI Software users the ability to browse and edit their source and target databases as they：

• unload in bulk with FACT, and select/filter in CoSort/SortCL or in SQL.
• load in bulk with pre-CoSorted data, and insert/update in CoSort/SortCL or SQL.
• manipulate and protect table contents with FieldShield (or CoSort/SortCL).
• migrate tables with NextForm (or CoSort/SortCL).
• generate test tables with RowGen (or CoSort/SortCL).

In the same GUI, the results of CoSort/SortCL, FieldShield and other IRI software operations can feed advanced data visualization plug-ins like BIRT：

Discover Data

The IRI Workbench supports the discovery and definition of your disparate data sources in both local and remotely connected systems. All flat files and database tables to which you connect can be defined automatically in data definition file (DDF) format. The data discovery and definition features in the Workbench support all IRI software users. Standalone data profiling tools may also be used, outside of or integrated into Eclipse. Once profiled and documented in DDF metadata repositories, you are ready to being using the layout information in their data integration, staging, protection, and BI applications.

Design and Run Job

The IRI Workbench provides a simple visual interface and ergonomic modules to design and run all IRI software. In the GUI, built on Eclipse, you build, modify, share, and execute simple, portable job scripts.

The job scripts for all the products (except IRI FACT) are based on the IRI CoSort Sort Control Language (SortCL) program. SortCL is a fourth-generation language (4GL) designed to be self-documenting for English readers, but with the IRI Workbench, you do not have to learn the language.

Job scripts can also render in a syntax-aware editor. You can use the editor to write or modify parameters. Changes in the scripts are reflected dynamically in the job outline, the GUI dialogs, and broader job flow (project) metadata. Thus there are a number of places you can make changes that will propagate automatically.