IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced free technical resources to help insurance companies better access, integrate and manage ACORD standards-based XML data across the enterprise. Database administrators and software developers running IBM DB2 9 data server software can now view an interactive demo and download a new DB2 pureXML industry bundle that includes scripts and examples at no charge to begin seamlessly managing both conventional relational data and ACORD XML messages without having to reformat the XML data for consumption outside of the database.
Insurance companies are grappling with siloed business applications that run on multiple platforms from different vendors, each with their own unique data types, interfaces and routing capabilities. Applications that support distinct lines of business such as life, annuities, health, property, casualty, surety, and reinsurance, each store XML data in a proprietary fashion. As a result, developers spend considerable time and resources to break XML data into consumable pieces and store it in relational databases for use in other applications, making application maintenance highly complex, time consuming and costly.
