XIC 5.0 also improves control over how business applications are deployed and maintained.

Featured in the product is a software infrastructure approach dubbed "intermediation," serving as a dynamic alternative to static integration. A patented infrastructure layer sits between applications and data where business logic resides, so no code changes are required in base applications. Intermediation exceeds the performance of XML-based integration approaches, Xcalia said.

Developers can focus on writing business application code, said Pierre Violo, chairman and CEO of Xcalia. "They don't have to do anything in terms of writing the communication code," Violo said. XIC version 5.0 can serve as an alternative or as a companion to an enterprise service bus.

Other key features in version 5.0 include:

* Support for Service Data Objects (SDO) 2.0, for accessing heterogeneous data sources in a disconnected model.