NIEM Harmonizer Hub simplifies and streamlines the adoption and use of the NIEM and LEXS (Logical Entity Exchange Specification) standards.

Using NIEM Harmonizer Hub, a local, state, tribal or federal agency may easily build NIEM-conformant messages that can simultaneously support regional information sharing, as well as participate in statewide solutions and the FBI’s Law Enforcement National Data Exchange (N-DEx) Program.

Built upon Sypherlink’s NIEM Harmonizer solution, which enables local agencies to easily map and generate NIEM/LEXS compliant messages, NIEM Harmonizer Hub enables recipients to easily ingest incoming data so that local, regional or state target applications can appropriately consume and route the data. In addition, it’s designed to help aggregate incoming messages from multiple contributing agencies, to more efficiently participate in federal efforts, such as FBI N-DEx or the National SAR (Suspicious Activity Reporting) Initiative.

Like NIEM Harmonizer Spoke, NIEM Harmonizer Hub offers both inbound and outbound NIEM translation capabilities which support simple and complex XML requirements, including the Department of Justice’s LEXS framework, which is leveraged by such agencies as the FBI. NIEM Harmonizer Hub can be configured in one of two modes:

• Warehouse mode – accepts NIEM-based upon LEXS Publish/Describe (LEXS-PD) messages, encapsulating end-point agency data, and writes it into a central repository; and
• Federated mode – provides a service-oriented-architecture (SOA)-based interface to allow applications to invoke queries against a local data source based on the LEXS Search/Retrieve (LEXS-SR) specification.

Warehouse mode

In data sharing programs where a target warehouse application has already been identified, NIEM Harmonizer Hub can be configured to write to that schema, either directly or through available APIs exposed by the underlying data system.

In programs where constituents have not settled on a specific data model or where multiple applications are needed to operate on the same data set, NIEM Harmonizer Hub can be configured to write to a specialized NIEM relational data model. This model, originally developed by Sypherlink in conjunction with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, provides a normalized, vendor-neutral, method for integrating with in integrated justice environments.

Federated mode

The purpose of using NIEM Harmonizer Hub in a federated mode is to simplify working with the LEXS Search and Retrieve (LEXS-SR) protocol. LEXS-SR is the foundation for prominent data sharing initiatives such as the FBI’s National Data Exchange (N-DEx) program, the Department of Justice’s OneDOJ system, and the Department of Homeland Security’s Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) initiative.

Sypherlink NIEM Harmonizer Hub running in a federated configuration allows applications to invoke searches using a web-services-based framework. The software takes these requests, formats them into the appropriate message type, brokers them to configured clients, and collates all of the results from responding systems for presentation to the originating application. This allows any application to query and retrieve information from systems using a specific LEXS-SR-based architecture.