Continuous integration: The wait is over

by Jackie Zack

In the traditional extract-transform-load (ETL) marketplace, continuous information integration has not always been an option. But as businesses are faced with growing demands for information "right now," the call for continuous information integration has become a driving need. Thanks to technology from DataMirror the marketplace is becoming much better equipped to meet those demands.

DataMirror's comprehensive family of software solutions is designed to help customers continuously detect, translate, and communicate information changes across a wide variety of information systems, including DB2 UDB, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, Sybase, Teradata, flat files, XML and PointBase. For Teradata, this means that DataMirror has the ability to continuously capture changed information from a variety of non-Teradata source databases and move only the changes to Teradata, on a sub-second basis.

"Our positioning and competitive advantage is our ability to provide integration in a continuous mode through our detect, translate and communicate technology," says Rean Pretorius, senior vice president, Global Channel & Alliances for DataMirror. "We are proud to be the first provider to offer true, continuous information integration. For over ten years, we have been allowing companies that are under increased pressure to produce and share quality information quickly."

"In today's enterprise, you have quite a large environment with mixed systems," explains Todd Starnes, business alliance manager for DataMirror. "You need a solution that will be able to take that information from diverse systems, translate it into the required format, and communicate it in a continuous mode to various systems, so people can access that information and create reports or perform other important functions."

DataMirror's Transformation Server is a flexible, high-performance solution designed to save businesses time and resources by providing programming-free information integration across an enterprise. Using Transformation Server's advanced technology, companies can improve the integrity and reliability of their information systems and share vital information with customers, partners and employees, allowing them to make intelligent business decisions.

DataMirror and Teradata formed a technology partnership in March 2003 when a joint customer approached the two companies for continuous information movement from its transactional systems into its Teradata Warehouse. The benefits of the joint venture became immediately apparent.

With Transformation Server, customers can easily and cost-effectively consolidate enterprise information from multiple sources into their Teradata Warehouses. DataMirror's technology detects database changes as they occur and "pushes" the transformed changes into the Teradata Warehouse, allowing users to act on the most current information.

"Other data-centric integration solutions require manual intervention or the scheduling of 'batch' loads of data, where information is intermittently loaded from one system to another," reports Pretorius.

DataMirror's Transformation Server, in tandem with Teradata, is well suited for a wide range of business applications, including supply chain management, e-business, data warehousing, business intelligence, business activity monitoring and customer management. The bottom line is that the technology is here. True, continuous integration into Teradata is no longer just a great need—it's a great asset.

For more information regarding DataMirror, visit datamirror.com. T

Jackie Zack, a Michigan-based business, technical and feature writer, has written for several trade journals.