Search Results for: powercenter
MDM Goes Big at Informatica World 2013: Here’s What to Expect
Informatica World 2013 is right around the corner, and I’m eager to tell you about all we have planned. This year, MDM will play a prominent role, as you can see by the sheer number of MDM-related sessions presented by Informatica customers, partners, and employees.
Here are just a few highlights:
The Safe On-Ramp to Big Data
The hype around big data is certainly top of mind with executives at most companies today but what I am really seeing are companies finally making the connection between innovation and data. Data as a corporate asset is now getting the respect it deserves in terms of a business strategy to introduce new innovative products and services and improve business operations. The most advanced companies have C-level executives responsible for delivering top and bottom line results by managing their data assets to their maximum potential. The Chief Data Officer and Chief Analytics Officer own this responsibility and report directly to the CEO. (more…)
Five Ways You Can Extend PowerCenter with Informatica Cloud – Part 2
In Ashwin Viswanath’s previous video blog, he spoke about why it is important to have a cloud integration solution that has purpose-built integration applications. In this video, he delves deeper into the security aspects of cloud integration and how to rapidly provision integration environments for distributed business units, subsidiaries and departments in a quick and efficient manner.
Reading Maps
On a recent trip to a new city, someone said that the easiest way from the airport to the hotel was to use the Metro. I could speak the language, but reading it was another matter. I was surprised by how quickly I navigated to the hotel by following the Metro map. The Metro map is based on the successful design of the London Underground map.
Harry Beck was not a cartographer. He was an engineering draftsman. He started drawing a different type of map in his spare time. Beck believed that the passengers were not worried about the distance accuracy of the map. He reduced the map to straight lines and sharp angles, which produced a map closer to an electrical schematic diagram rather than a more common geographic map. The company that ran the London Underground was skeptical of Beck’s map since it was radically different and they had not commissioned the project. (more…)
Five Ways You Can Extend PowerCenter with Informatica Cloud – Part 1
In Ashwin Viswanath’s previous blog post, SaaS Data Integration for SaaS Applications, he explained how SaaS applications are much more dynamic than on-premises business applications with new fields and objects added with just a few clicks. This same agility is required when it comes to integrating SaaS applications, which is why it is important to have a hybrid IT strategy for your data integration architecture. Informatica PowerCenter together with Informatica Cloud can help you get started with such a strategy.
Hitting the Batch Wall, Part 2: Hardware Scaling
This is the second installment of my multi-part blog series on “hitting the batch wall.” Well, it’s not so much about hitting the batch wall, but what you can do to avoid hitting the wall. Today’s topic is “throwing hardware” at the problem (a.k.a. hardware scaling). I’ll discuss the common approaches and the tradeoffs of hardware scaling with Informatica software.
Before I can begin to discuss hardware scaling, I start with this warning: faster hardware only improves the load window situation when it resolves a bottleneck. Data integration jobs are a lot like rush hour traffic, they can only run as fast as the slowest component. It doesn’t make any sense to buy a Ferrari if you will always be driving behind a garbage truck. In other words, if your ETL jobs are constrained by the source/target systems or I/O or even just memory, then faster/more CPUs will rarely improve the situation. Understand your bottlenecks before you start throwing hardware at them! (more…)
Beyond Data Profiling – Part 2
The Easy Button
Basic data profiling, while significantly automating the process, is still a manually intensive effort to perform the detailed analysis. For example, normally you have to go through and select the table or tables that you want to participate in the analysis; configure the profile; and then run the profile, etc. At Informatica, we are going beyond basic data profiling other ways. The first is what I jokingly refer to as the Staples™ easy button. A new feature built on our advanced profiling is called Enterprise Discovery. This feature allows you to point at a schema or schemas and selectively run column profiling, primary key profiling, foreign key profiling and data domain discovery. So with a few clicks of the mouse you can run all your profiling requirements in one step against hundreds or thousands of tables. (more…)
Beyond Data Profiling – Part 1
This blog discusses going beyond basic data profiling. But for those of you who don’t know what basic data profiling is, let me summarize quickly. Basic data profiling is what I call three-dimensional analysis. I discuss this in some depth in my book, “Three Dimensional Analysis Data Profiling Techniques.”
Basic profiling includes column profiling, table profiling, and cross table profiling. Column profiling is automated discovery of the true metadata of your data. This is the process of identifying the accurate data type and precision, minimum value, maximum value, the number of nulls, percent null and more on a column by column basis. Table profiling attempts to infer a primary key based upon the data. You can also infer functional dependencies within each table. Cross table profiling is about finding primary key / foreign key relationships between the tables, as well as overlap analysis. This technology has been around since the late 90s. It boggles my mind that many data related projects still do not perform basic profiling before they embark on the project. But that, as they say, is another story. (more…)
Data Chaos: Public Enemy Number One
This year marks the 20th anniversary for Informatica. Twenty years of solving the problem of getting data from point A to point B, improving its quality, establishing a single view and managing it over its life-cycle. Yet after 20 years of innovation and leadership in the data integration market, when one would think the problem had been solved, all data had been extracted, transformed, cleansed and managed, it actually hasn’t — companies still need data integration. Why? Data is complicated business. And with data increasingly becoming central to business survival, organizations are constantly looking for ways to unlock new sources of it, use it as an unforeseen source of insight and do it all with greater agility and at lower cost. (more…)
SaaS Data Integration for SaaS Applications
It’s no secret that software as a service (SaaS) applications like Salesforce CRM, Eloqua, Workday, NetSuite and Concur, to name a few, often get their start in the enterprise through individual departments, divisions and subsidiaries. Known for their rapid deployment times, frequent feature releases with API updates and end-user ease of use, SaaS applications are typically much more dynamic than on-premise business applications. New fields and objects can be added with a few clicks by line-of-business administrators, analysts and operational roles. So when it comes to data integration, waiting for IT to redevelop and deploy mappings every time there is a metadata change typically doesn’t meet the expectations of business users and application owners, who are used to greater speed and agility in the cloud.