In accordance with an embodiment, described herein is a system and method for providing recommended mappings to a mapper for use in designing an integration flow in a design time of a cloud-based integration service. A database can store mapping records from a plurality of sources, and mapping records inferred from the extracted mapping records. Each mapping record in the database can be associated with a rating generated by a ranking engine. A recommendation engine can be invoked to retrieve one or more mapping records from the database and an auto suggestion engine, for graphical display in the mapper. The integration flow can be published, and mapping information therein can be parsed by the recommendation engine into one or more mapping records, which are persisted into the database to update the mapping records in the database.