Overview

Altova FlowForce Server is a highly customizable workflow automation tool designed to streamline enterprise-level data integration tasks. It automates the execution of XML and XBRL processing, data transformations, report generation, and document processing, making it an essential tool for organizations that require efficient and reliable data management solutions. FlowForce Server provides comprehensive workflow management and control for dedicated high-speed servers, virtual machines, or workstations. It employs a web interface to conveniently implement, manage, and modify data transformation jobs in a busy data processing environment. The server continuously checks for trigger conditions, starts and monitors job execution, and records detailed logs of all activity.

Features

• Automated execution: Automates the execution of RaptorXML Server for XML and XBRL processing operations, MapForce Server for data transformations, and StyleVision Server for rendering reports, documents, and e-forms.
• Job triggers: Activates job execution by time, file, or remote triggers, supporting flow control with loops, conditions, result evaluation, and error handling.
• Web interface: Intuitive web interface to manage all server activities, including job creation, modification, and monitoring.
• File system commands: Automates file system commands or any process that can be executed via a command line.
• Job caching: Caches job results to deliver instant responses to HTTP requests.
• Execution logs: Maintains detailed execution logs for monitoring and troubleshooting.
• Access control: Provides access control via roles, permissions, and privileges.
• AS2 support: Includes support for the AS2 specification for transporting data securely and reliably.
• Cross-platform support: Compatible with Windows Server, Windows, Linux, and macOS.

Benefits

Load balancing When hardware limits cause FlowForce Server to be overwhelmed by multiple job instances running simultaneously, it is possible to redistribute the workload to another running instance of FlowForce Server (a so-called "worker"). You can set up a cluster comprised of one master machine and multiple worker machines and thus take advantage of all the licensed cores in the cluster. Leaner resource management One of the machines designated as a master continuously monitors job triggers and allocates queued items to workers or even to itself, depending on the configuration. You can configure the queue settings and assign a job to a particular queue. For example, in larger clusters, you can configure the master machine not to process any job instances at all. This will free up the master's resources to be dedicated to the continuous provision of FlowForce Service as opposed to data processing. Easier scheduled maintenance of workers You can restart or temporarily shut down any running instance of FlowForce Server that is not the master, without interrupting the provision of service. Note that the master is expected to be available at all times; restarting or shutting it down will still interrupt the provision of service. High availability In the case of hardware failures, power outages, unplugged network cables, etc., affecting worker servers, new instances of jobs can be taken over by a different machine. Support for distributed execution makes it easy to scale your FlowForce Server deployment seamlessly to accommodate work loads that increase over time without any degradation in performance. In smaller clusters, the master server can still process some jobs and delegate others to worker(s). As a cluster scales, the workload can be spread over multiple workers.