Development of the new EC-Design starts in 2017

Our message modelling tool, EC-Design, is being renewed. That creates opportunities for new functionality. We are continuously developing EC-Design, because new standards and user requirements keep coming in. But we think the time has come to give EC-Design a significant upgrade. With it we bring renewal and change, and the most important added value is that EC-Design can be used even more widely!

Easy integration with EC-Design plug-ins

When the new version of EC-Design is launched next year, our customers will gain a range of new applications. EC-Design can be used more widely, which means it can be used not only during development but also in the test phase, or when building system interfaces. In the new version, EC-Design is prepared to be available as a plug-in, so that messages for system integration can be generated quickly.

With the new EC-Design we can create an environment both for the people who already use it today (the authors of message specifications) and for developers and others who use specifications for implementation, by developing plug-ins that connect to technologies such as Tibco and MuleSoft (middleware). For this we follow the Eclipse architecture for building plug-ins. It will become possible to integrate EC-Design functionality with middleware systems such as Tibco and MuleSoft.

Using EC-Design specifications together with plug-ins should make building and maintaining interfaces a lot easier. As an EC-Design user, you will then be able to define specifications in your own environment and directly generate a Tibco or MuleSoft project from them. In this way EC-Design does a lot of the preparatory work, and you can move on faster to the next step of your integration project.

Version control and history

Another addition in the new EC-Design is version control of messages. In the current version of EC-Design, old versions of messages are no longer accessible once a change is made to the data model. (After all, the message is kept consistent with the data model.) That is going to change! In the new version you have access to all versions of messages, so that you can compare and reuse them if you wish. It also makes it possible to check which user made a particular change to the data model or a message. This way everyone can always work on one consistent data model. And to make that even easier, there are reporting options to view changes in models and messages.

New standards

In addition to the new functionality mentioned above, new standards have again been added to EC-Design, including JSON. Recommendations for new standards are always evolving and we will keep up with them; XBRL, for example, is still on our radar. We see that our customers greatly appreciate our continuity and quality, and the way we think along with them. We are very happy about that, and it encourages us to take on these new developments. EC-Design makes working with models and specifications better and easier all the time. EC-Design produces clear instructions, so that you stay in control yourself and can save thousands of euros when building system interfaces. We believe that this will allow us to make many customers happy again in the decades to come.