Informatica Perspectives

As mentioned in my previous post, I was at Informatica World 2007 in Orlando last week. I stand corrected, this year was the 9th official conference; my customer event in 1997 didn’t officially count. I’m sure next year will be an even bigger celebration of “Integration Everywhere”. The customer and partner interaction was quite refreshing with ample time to network with peers and explore possible solutions provided by 3rd parties. The night life was vibrant and active.

One of the most compelling sessions I attended was on Data Integration performance optimization and a new technique available to leverage both a database engine and the traditional “ETL Server”. Called a “Hybrid ETLT Approach”, Stephen Brobst, CTO of Teradata, opened with a review of scenarios where processing in the database makes the most sense and where a data integration engine is best used in the end to end data processing and delivery lifecycle. Stephen also showed how design really isn’t changed at all, you build the same transformations and at run-time, the location of processing can be optimized. That way, metadata is still preserved and all the speed and compliance benefits of visual design approach pertain.
James Markarian, CTO of Informatica, completed the session with a technical drill-down of Informatica’s enabling architecture in support of pushdown optimization. The benchmark results show significant increases in performance using “well tuned” databases and also some limitations in types of mappings that are supported by the SQL language. Optimizing the use of available resources and using the best path toward completing a given task makes perfect sense to me!

Another excellent one was about MDM. In the “Enterprise Data Management” track, Jill Dyche and Evan Levy from Baseline Consulting provided an overview of CDI and MDM based on their research, experiences and writing. Called MDM 2.0, they described a current, modern definition of CDI and MDM, lessons learned from their implementation experiences. What I got out of the session was

1. Don’t confuse Data Warehousing and CDI, clear differences exist in the purpose for each.
2. Flexibility Increases the Need for Control, Data Governance is required for success
3. MDM is a new development paradigm and should be treated as a program
4. Clear ownership and guidelines are required to define the consumption and ownership model(s)
5. Get sponsorship from the top, it will take power to overcome cross-organizational conflicts

These were just two of the 50+ sessions presented. Opportunities to learn were everywhere and I received overwhelming positive feedback on the event! Now back to work!