What Can MIMB Carry Between Your Tools?
This Meta Integration Model Bridge (MIMB) connector guide is for engineers who run, embed, or support MIMB, the metadata harvesting engine behind MetaKarta's 400+ native connectors, including OEM partners who ship it inside their own products. It covers what MIMB does (harvesting, integration, and conversion), where to find the supported tools, known bridge limitations, the standalone application and its command line, third-party software, and release notes. After reading it, you can check a bridge's coverage and limits before a project depends on it.
Note
Some of the features detailed in this document may not apply and/or be available for the particular edition/version you are using.
Get started
Frequently asked questions
What is MIMB, and what does it do?
Meta Integration Model Bridge (MIMB) handles three jobs. Metadata harvesting collects metadata and data flow lineage from databases, big data platforms, data integration tools, BI tools, and enterprise applications such as ERP systems.
Metadata integration lets design tools update one another through forward and reverse engineering. Metadata conversion moves metadata from legacy design tools to newer ones.
Which tools does MIMB support?
The full list is published as a searchable page you can filter by vendor, tool, or bridge name, across ten categories from relational databases to data modeling tools. Icons mark Windows-only bridges, incremental harvesting, multi-model support, and data profiling. Inside a licensed application, the available tools appear in its metadata import and export menus, with tooltips for each parameter.
See MIMB supported tools.
Why is some metadata lost when moving a model between tools?
The guide names seven points where metadata can drop out, from how each tool implements a methodology to what each bridge and the Meta Integration Repository (MIR) support. Database-specific physical properties aren't fully converted, for example.
Bridges keep what they can as descriptions or notes. Export a model and re-import it into the same tool first to check.
Which MIMB bridges are Windows-only?
Most bridges are written in Java and run anywhere a Java runtime runs. Some are C++ and Windows-only because they depend on Windows COM APIs, such as the bridges for Erwin Data Modeler native files, SAP BusinessObjects Universe Designer, and MicroStrategy Intelligence Server. The supported tools list marks these with a Windows icon.
See [Linux vs. Windows Only Availability]{linux-vs-windows-only-availability].
Who uses the MIMB standalone application?
Second-level support teams. The standalone web application requires a dedicated license and is used to troubleshoot import and export bridges outside the host product. Its section covers web client and server requirements, installation, configuration, execution, usage, and the command line.
How do I run MIMB bridges from the command line?
Run MIMB.bat on Windows or MIMB.sh on Linux. You can pass parameters directly, but XML request files avoid encoding problems: set M_CONVERSATION_DIRECTORY, run the import and export once in the UI to generate the files, combine them, then run MIMB.bat -r request.xml -y reply.xml.
What's new in MIMB 12.0, and what's planned?
Shipped with 12.0 (generally available September 22, 2026): new bridges for Microsoft Fabric Lakehouse, SAP Datasphere, and OData, plus support for Snowflake Semantic Views, Databricks Metric Views, and Oracle Analytic Views, and Java 17 across the bridge code. Planned: bridges for Microsoft Fabric Data Factory and Microsoft Fabric OneLake.
Related documentation
Return to the MetaKarta documentation home. To install MIMB as a remote harvesting agent, see the Deployment Guide; for the OEM escalation process, see Support.