XCS eiConsole

PilotFish Technology’s XCS eiConsole for ACORD is a graphical Integrated Development Environment that helps you develop, test, deploy, manage, and maintain ACORD interfaces with specific capabilities that enable the fastest, highest quality, and most cost effective means of implementing the ACORD XML standard. Members of ACORD are eligible to receive one FREE Concurrent Use license for the XCS eiConsole from ACORD’s website:

Each individual graphical component within the XCS eiConsole for ACORD bundle provides enormous value to anyone that has implemented or is implementing the ACORD Standard. These components include:

• The Validation Processor

• The File Specification Editor

• The Data Mapper

• The Schema Manager

• Testing

The output of each of these components is W3C-compliant which means it can be plugged into any W3C-Compliant SOA/ESB infrastructure.

Specific Features of the XCS eiConsole for ACORD

The XCS eiConsole, which was designed to support insurance and specifically, ACORD requirements,has been even further extended to support the unique features and functions for insurance not available in any other integration tools. These features vastly increase the insurance professional’s productivity. Some of the productivity enhancing capabilities include:

• An on-line tutorial in both video and text that provides step-by-step instructions for building,and testing an ACORD message.

• Pre-built templates for ACORD Life & Annuity, and P&C transactions – saving thousands of hours that would be spent reviewing implementation guides and custom defining transactions.

• The ability to submit transactions directly to ACORDճ Testing and Certification Facility (TCF).

• A built-in Validation Processor that supports schema validation, Schematron /XSLT validation,and validators that can check metadata and reference information, perform database lookups and support regular expressions and patterns.

• A File Specification Editor that enables transformation of Excel spreadsheets (such as DTCC)and flat file definitions (such as AL3) to and from an XML representation including their associated documentation. No time consuming and tedious custom programming is required.

• An intuitive graphical Data Mapper that provides a Ұoint, click, drag, and dropӠmethod of building complex XSLT transformations. ACORD-specific features of the Data Mapper include:

• Ability to import both the ACORD XSD and ACORD Metadata – eliminating the need to search external sources for documentation necessary for the data mapping process.

• Searchable ACORD Metadata documentation.

• Drag and drop mapping of typecodes (Life & Annuity), and Codelists (P&C). Tabular values are automatically imported from the ACORD metadata documentation.

• Point-and-click support for role-based relations.

• Easy upgrade from one release of the ACORD standard to another with just a few mouse-clicks.

• Ability to export W3C-compliant XSLT transformations.

• A Schema Manager that enables ACORD-compliant model extensions including the ability to add elements, attributes, fields, new types, and ACORD type codes and code lists. It also supports simple point-and-click schema slicing

Users of the XCS eiConsole for ACORD can build prototype interfaces and test them end-to-end including connectivity to the Source and Target systems. There is also an XCS eiPlatform Emulator built into the XCS eiConsole that will let the user simulate running multiple interfaces and complex workflows in production. This is ideal for supporting an Agile/iterative development methodology.