Breaking News - Embarcadero Introduces ER/Studio Enterprise Portal
Embarcadero Technologies today introduced a new automated metadata query and reporting tool, ER/Studio Enterprise Portal. The tool provides enterprise-wide visibility into ongoing operations, as well as increased data standards and regulatory compliance, and helps ER/Studio users better understand their metadata, object whereabouts and data usage to optimize their database assets.
“For customers that use ER/Studio, this is now an extended product that will offer the ability to communicate through the Web the ER/Studio metadata information that all those modelers are documenting, storing, putting into a repository,” Greg Keller, chief evangelist, DatabaseGear Products, Embarcadero, told 5 Minute Briefing.
Embarcadero’s modeling-focused products help database professionals and software developers create, document, change and communicate data about metadata. Users can develop and modify data structures with ER/Studio, determine data’s use in business processes with EA/Studio and, now with ER/Studio Enterprise Portal, conduct Web-based searches and communicate information about metadata to a wide variety of audiences.
“A data architect’s job is many-fold,” observed Keller. “They are modeling, they are documenting, they understand the rules that the business wants to enforce on data.” Meanwhile, every other business unit at a company, from finance to marketing to sales, as well as other constituents, are all looking for knowledge about data in databases – “and architects are the key to that.” The new solution will address the onslaught of requests for reports on the information, he explained.
The reporting and search technology used to develop ER/Studio Enterprise Portal makes it easier for both IT and business users to share data stored in the ER/Studio repository. The idea, Keller said, “is to literally put a Web server and Web pages in front of our modeling repository and allow for Google-like searching of information in that repository in a way that a non-technical person can be very successful in identifying and pulling back rich information."
Like other Embarcadero products, ER/Studio Enterprise Portal will be available to download and try, said Keller. “We will do that with the portal, but we will also be offering a hosted portal so people can get a flavor, an experience, for how the product will operate and what it feels like.” For more information, go here.
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IBM Announces Updates to InfoSphere Portfolio
At the TDWI World Conference yesterday, IBM introduced new additions to its InfoSphere portfolio, consisting of a new version of IBM’s master data management software, as well as a new release of IBM InfoSphere Information Server.
IBM InfoSphere Master Data Management Server for Product Information Management (MDM Server for PIM), previously known as IBM WebSphere Product Center, enables customers to maintain a single view of product information as part of a comprehensive MDM strategy. The new release of MDM Server for PIM also provides an improved user interface, and the software is now integrated with InfoSphere Information Server so that customers can take advantage of that product's data cleansing capabilities. Improvements to the underlying technology - including use of the JAVA application protocol interface and integration with enterprise solutions based on an SOA - are intended to make MDM Server for PIM faster to roll out.
The new release of IBM InfoSphere Information Server provides capabilities to allow customers to standardize and resolve multicultural name data. In addition, IBM is offering enhanced globalization and improved ease-of-use with new automation features to simplify and speed large-scale information integration projects.
"InfoSphere incorporates a new class of middleware that we call 'information with middleware,'" Michael Curry, director of product management and strategy for InfoSphere, told 5 Minute Briefing. It is reflective of a trend in the marketplace, he said, "where companies are trying to optimize their use of information rather than just connect applications together. In order to do that, you need this new class of information middleware that helps you to create, manage, govern and deliver trusted information throughout your company. That is what InfoSphere is focused on."
IBM also added multi-cultural name resolution technology, now called InfoSphere Global Name Recognition, as a module to the InfoSphere Information Server platform. InfoSphere Information Server expands global address verification support to more than 244 countries, as well as global support for eight languages. This helps enable developers to work with tools, documentation, online help, and error messages in their native languages.
IBM said the new release also offers enhanced support for grid deployment, and expanded SOA support. InfoSphere now offers advanced security features supporting Web services standards, support for Web 2.0 services using REST and RSS standards, as well as support for direct service publishing from Oracle databases, InfoSphere Master Data Management Server, and mainframe data sources. There is also more support for the mainframe overall, said Curry. "We have done a lot of things here around managing metadata more effectively on the mainframe. We have also made significant improvements on our changed data capture on the mainframe - for example we now have a log-based capture mechanism for IMS," he noted. For more additional product details, go here.
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Aster Data Systems and Pentaho Establish Partnership
Aster Data Systems has announced a strategic partnership with Pentaho Corp. that combines product integration, certification, and services. Aster will provide its Aster nCluster analytic database to work in conjunction with Pentaho open source business intelligence (BI) products, to enable customers to rapidly collect and analyze large volumes of data for deep analysis and reporting. The two companies will also partner on joint sales and marketing efforts.
“Given Aster’s architecture and uniqueness for high scalability on commodity hardware and Pentaho’s leadership in commercial open source BI, I think the sweet spot for this is the audience that has more and more data and probably less and less time and money to manage and analyze it,” Lance Walter, vice president of marketing, Pentaho, told 5 Minute Briefing. These companies “are looking for innovative technology approaches like what Aster provides to address the data warehouse and data infrastructure piece, and likewise, business intelligence delivered via open source from Pentaho” so that they can get the reports, analytics, and dashboards at a lower cost of acquisition and cost of ownership compared to traditional business intelligence offerings, Walter said.
Through the partnership between Pentaho and Aster, companies looking for faster and more frequent analysis of their business on increasing amounts of data have a commercial open source alternative for BI, according to the companies. The combined offering aims to deliver deeper business insights to users more quickly and broadly with a database management system scale to keep pace with growing data volumes.
The two companies are finding through the partnership “that you don’t have to be a huge organization to have a huge amount of data,” Walter observed. Even though both companies “have pretty strong enterprise backgrounds and enterprise architectures,” Walter noted, the partnership addresses a pain point that also exists below the level of big organizations, for organizations that don’t necessarily have a lot of employees but still have a lot of data and a high value analytics challenge to manage. For more about Pentaho, go here. And, for more about Aster Data Systems, go here.
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OAUG Offers eLearning Sessions for Hyperion Users
The Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG), the world’s largest knowledgebase for Oracle Applications users, announced its upcoming Hyperion eLearning sessions for August 2008.
“Our goal for these sessions is to provide an overview of the data integration options available to Hyperion Essbase users and provide a better understanding to users who may be interested in correctly using the database management system,” said Jan Wagner, president of the OAUG. “Each eLearning session addresses complex business scenarios in order to rapidly develop custom analytic and enterprise performance management.”
The Hyperion eLearning workshop titled “Consolidate BI and Planning Applications to Cut Costs and Improve User Productivity Using Essbase, “ will be held on Thursday, Aug. 21, at four times throughout the day. The workshop will provide an overview of some data integration options available to Hyperion Essbase users and address complex business scenarios to help users rapidly develop custom analytics and enterprise performance management solutions. The workshop features real case studies involving two banks and a large grocery retailer. Each case study discusses issues such as support, user efficiency improvements, cost savings, reporting and planning challenges faced while using legacy systems and implementation tips for new systems. Registration is required for the Hyperion eLearning sessions. The presenter for the online sessions is Tim Tow, president of Applied OLAP, Inc.
The OAUG Hyperion eLearning summer series kicked off on Thursday, July 24, and discussed “Data Integration Options for Hyperion System 9.” Previous presentations in the Hyperion eLearning Webcast Series have been recorded and can be viewed on the Hyperion SIG Web site. For more information about eLearning or other OAUG conference and education opportunities, go here.
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