DB2 Information Integration

Integration is endless. The IT environment is constantly changing. New applications are constantly emerging online. Changes to the release level of packaged applications will generate a chain reaction to the entire infrastructure. People always try to use the next tool or new technology. Our investments must focus on the future. As a result, organizations have emerged focused on an integrated architecture. Whether it's Information Management, Integration Service, or Data Architecture ), specialized departments within the company are addressing integration business and defining the integration architecture and infrastructure to provide the foundation for their future business) issues.

Integration is a very difficult task, because the increase of Information and the diversity of information sources are combined, the work of searching useful information becomes very complex. Enterprises must be able to access not only traditional application sources such as relational databases), but also Extended Markup Language Extensible Markup Language, XML) documents, text documents, scanned images, video clips, incoming news, Web content, emails, Analytical 3D data, and special-purpose storage including internal and external ). Due to organizational or operational constraints, information from different distributed data sources cannot be fully copied or merged into a single database. Although hidden information can be found, it is easier to seize opportunities when information is associated with each other and to better serve customers.

Technical vendors in many markets, such as Enterprise Application Integration, data warehouse, Enterprise Content Management, portals, and application servers, have begun to focus their attention on the overall integration issue. This makes it more difficult for us to choose the best technology that can meet business needs. Moreover, market positioning of fist products often makes it difficult to take advantage of a specific implementation in subsequent projects.

Although competitors may only provide integration in special fields, IBM can provide an integrated platform with many products that can work seamlessly together. This article focuses on DB2®Information Integrator™Product to help you understand how they help solve information integration problems.

Overview of IBM DB2 Information Integrator
The IBM DB2 Information Integrator software shown in Figure 1 provides the basis for the strategic Information integration framework. This framework helps customers access, operate, and integrate various distributed data in real time. This folder portfolio) includes:

• IBM DB2 Information Integrator V8.1, a new product based on DB2 Information Management Technology
• IBM DB2 Information Integrator for Content V8.2, formerly IBM Enterprise Information Portal.

Figure 1. DB2 Information Integrator provides integrated access to various distributed and real-time data, just as data comes from a single data source.

Each of these products abstracts a public data model from a variety of distributed data and content sources, and enables customers to access and operate them as a single source. Each product supports a user community, which is defined based on the data that Members can access and the development community they support. This product set supports read access solutions, which are common for enterprise report generation, knowledge management, business intelligence, portal infrastructure, and customer relationship management.

DB2 Information Integrator: servers used for federal data and Replication
The service objects of DB2 Information Integrator are application development communities that are familiar with relational database application development. You can use SQL applications or SQL generation tools, such as integrated development environments, report generation and analysis tools, to access and operate different distributed data through the federated data server.

DB2 Information Integrator is most suitable for projects where the primary data source is relational data and other XML, Web, or content sources are added. DB2 Information Integrator is based on the basic structure of DB2 technology, using IBM in such as IBM DB2 DataJoiner®IBM DB2 Relational Connect and IBM DiscoveryLink®Early investments in such products. DB2 Information Integrator is built on the DB2 general database. DB2 general database is a modern database architecture and is world-renowned for its scalability and scalability.

DB2 Information Integrator can federate, search, cache, convert, and copy data. As a federated data server, it provides®Products and from Microsoft®Out-of-the-box access to Oracle, Sybase, and Teradata databases. In addition, it can also access®MQ messages, XML documents, Web services, Microsoft Excel, flat files, ODBC or ole db sources, and semi-structured data in various formats unique to the Life Sciences industry. For IBM Lotus®Extended Search's integrated support enables the solution to access a wide range of Content, allowing it to access a variety of Content libraries, including DB2 Content Manager) as well as email databases, document resource libraries, third-party Internet search engines, and LDAP directories.

In addition, the toolbox of the developer extends the federal feature so that it can truly reach every data source.

The search and query access is provided through the standard SQL API, and®Extended Search combines the ability to access a wide range of content with the accuracy of the relational engine. There are two methods for text search:

• Allows you to create global indexes for backend relational storage. By using this method, text search semantics, such as fuzzy search, Dictionary support, and intra-range search, can be used in queries.
  
• The search architecture of the proxy, which does not require the creation or maintenance of a central index for cross-source access to content. The extended search engine converts each complete text query to the local query language of the target data source.

Query standard SQL response sets or XML documents. The optimizer has been significantly expanded to support distributed federal query processing.

• Query Rewriting is a powerful stage in query optimization. At this stage, the input query is poorly written and converted to the same idiom to improve performance, it can identify underlying data sources and limit or enable conversions based on the availability of specific conversions for a specific data source.
• Pushdown analysis is a newly introduced stage in query processing. It determines that each specific backend server can calculate the extent of a specific query, determine the amount of compensatory processing required on the DB2 Information Integrator system.
• Cost-based optimization creates a query execution scheme based on cost estimation. Cost Estimation currently includes standard statistics from source data, such as base or index), data server capabilities such as connection functions or built-in functions), data server capacity, I/O capacity, and network capacity.
• Statement generation generates an executable scheme based on the results of the cost-based Optimizer) has been expanded to generate effective DBMS-specific SQL statements for data sources that "understand SQL.
• The query runtime engine has been extended, allowing you to execute queries on local and distributed information, and allow functions to compensate and provide consistent virtual database views.
• The first release of the Federal High-speed cache provides an administrator-managed high-speed cache for an integrated view across the relational database backend. The optimizer automatically sends the query to the cache to meet the query requirements when appropriate.

DB2 Information Integrator has a rich set of conversion functions, including standard SQL functions, such as string operations, arithmetic computation, Statistical Computation, Online Analytical Processing functions, and process logic. Type-specific features-such as scoring algorithm) or chemical similarity search applications-further enhance the existing rich conversion of this group.

Extended style sheet Language Extensible Stylesheet Language, XSL) conversion makes it easier to swap documents and dynamically match different display features. User-Defined Functions allow customers to standardize almost any function of any data type. In addition, Web services can be accessed as built-in functions, which means that any Web services such as currency conversion can be converted into embedded conversion functions.

DB2 Information Integrator also includes a replication server for hybrid relational databases. Customers can copy data between IBMDB2, IBM Informix, Microsoft, Oracle, Sybase, and Teradata databases. You can configure various topology structures, wait time, and consistent features.

DB2 Information Integrator for Content: Content-centric federated access to applications
The service objects of DB2 Information Integrator for Content are Content application developers who need to search for and access text and non-text Information in a large number of Content sources. By providing seamless access to different data environments, DB2 Information Integrator for Content is equivalent to an Enterprise Information Portal product that is renamed and relocated.

DB2 Information Integrator for Content provides a rich set of integration functions, such as connectors connected to different Content sources, complex Information mining, and advanced workflows. To accelerate the implementation of Content integration projects, DB2 Information Integrator for Content provides out-of-the-box access to various data sources, all of which can be combined into a single search. These connectors provide access to the DB2 Content Manager series and other Content libraries, Lotus databases, relational databases, and a large amount of Content that IBM Lotus Extended Search can provide.

In addition, DB2 Information Integrator for Content includes complex Information mining functions that use Web search and text mining algorithms to provide structures for unstructured Content. The capabilities of mining algorithms include identifying the language used by the document, identifying features such as names in the document, classifying the document according to the defined classification, grouping the document by category, and summarizing the document. By building additional knowledge about enterprise scope information, enterprises can obtain additional returns from existing content assets.

Finally, DB2 Information Integrator for Content provides advanced workflow applications, enabling enterprises to improve production efficiency, shorten production time, and enhance communication and cooperation. By using a graphical workflow builder, developers can easily define the workflow process for merging query results to DB2 Information Integrator for Content to use these results across the enterprise.

Conclusion
Today's companies need to integrate information to increase customer loyalty and satisfaction, improve operational efficiency, win online customers and trading partners, and identify and seize opportunities. In short, information integration provides competitive advantages and is the basis for on-demand computing. IBM has heard about the need to integrate various types of data and understood this requirement. In fact, using the DB2 Information Integrator folder, IBM can continue to drive first-class technological innovation so that enterprises can make full use of all their Information assets.