Finally IBM has decided to give a permament name and place to the good old Mercator products. Now it is called WebSphere Transformation Extender (TX) and the latest version is 8. For very detailed product release information on WebSphere TX, Download IBM-WTX-8.pdf.
When Mercator was bought by Ascential, they placed Mercator under their flagship brand DataStage and called it DataStage TX. When IBM bough Ascential, they did the same thing by placing this under their Falgship brand WebSphere and called it WebSphere DataStage TX (WSTX).
IBM had a mapping and transformation tool WDI (WebSphere Data Interchange) which is commonly used for EDI Mapping or any other data mapping and tranformation. I had a post earlier that spoke a little bit about this in the context of WebSphere Partner Gateway (WPG). I guess WebSphere TX would replace WDI now. This would be a great addition to the WebSphere Partner Gateway (WPG) suite. It was a legacy product that come from IBM innovation and it probably was tough to let go of that. 🙂
I know Mercator for over 8 years now and I know that they have had an excellent tool and a huge base of over 6000 customers (All industries – Healthcare, Financial, Manufacturing). All those Mercator customers were wondering what to do and how to migrate. Now, they could be rest assured that this is announced. Good for them. I am sure this is here to stay for a long time to come.
Look for a follow-up post from me regarding migration of older Mercator versions to the latest and greatest WebSphere TX. We are currently working with a few customers who would like to migrate to 8.0. We have learnt some great lessons out of these migrations. Again, a TX would be a great partner for WebSphere Partner Gateway (WPG).
Cheers,
Steve Lokam