Sybase Data Integration Suite Introduction

Today, businesses are eager for DBAs (database administrators) and developers to integrate corporate data to help manage information, excavate customer databases, or meet day-to-day requirements. Sybase is using a new product called the Sybase Data Integration (DI) suite to meet this requirement. The main features of this new technology include:

_ Access to multiple different data sources and the ability to create a single, integrated view of the data

_ Access to a variety of heterogeneous data sources, including mainframe data sources

_ Captures the real-time events in the data source and propagates them to the application

_ Search and query for information in structured and unstructured data using contextual search

_ Using Sybase WorkSpace to develop applications

_ Manage DI Suite components using the common system Management Console

_ Common installer that uses a script-driven utility to perform interactive and background installation

The content of data integration will be described in two parts, in the first section we will detail all the features of the Sybase Data Integration suite and highlight the data Federation and Enterprise Information Integration (EII) paradigm. In the second section, we'll go into the details of replication, search, real-time events, and ETL (data extraction, transformation, and loading).

Note: Currently, ETL is provided independently of the data integration suite.

Components of the Sybase data Integration Suite

The DI suite contains all the common technologies (federated, replication, and ETL) for integrating data, as well as real-time and search capabilities. Figure 1 illustrates the various components of the data integration suite.

What is enterprise information integration?

The Sybase data Federation, provided by the Avaki company recently merged by Sybase, is a key component of the DI suite. It is based on the increasingly mainstream enterprise information integration (EII) concept, where enterprise information integration differs from an ETL-oriented data warehouse because it accesses only data without moving information. ETL itself is a process that is responsible for moving data to a central repository or data mart that supports business intelligence reporting, and consists of many steps.

Figure 1:sybase Data Integration Suite

However, although EII uses virtualization to display a unified information resource, it is actually calling "federated" data from multiple resources rather than copying it. As the number of databases continues to increase, the federated data approach becomes increasingly important in accessing distributed data. Avaki EII provides users with many of the core features of the EII technology, as well as increased grid functionality, data caching, the ability to move data independently across firewalls and admin domains, and the ability to share files.

Data Federation

As mentioned above, the Federation simplifies the process of integrating data from multiple distributed sources and can access integrated enterprise data. Users can use it:

_ Get a single virtual view of data from multiple different sources, including relational databases that support JDBC/ODBC access, applications (via JCA or Web services), Web services, XML documents, or files. The "federated" method means that the data is extracted from the original data source, not from a copy of the data or from a data mart.

_ Provide federated data in the form of Web services, SQL Views (using JDBC/ODBC access), or flat files to applications that need to use this data. Therefore, now the application does not need to create federated queries or directly access the source database, but it can access the data federation server to execute its queries.

_ Define data sources and queries using a GUI based tool and store them in the directory for easy execution by the application or search and reuse. It also supports instant queries.

_ Change the mode of the data source or move the database to another server without destroying the application. Simply modify the Web service or SQL view that the application is using.

_ Rely on security support for user authentication and common enterprise authentication patterns and fine-grained access controls defined in the EII layer for queries.

_ Use basic monitoring to see which servers are running properly, manage and add users, manage servers, and audit logs to understand access patterns and determine which users are logged on to the server and what queries they run.

-Build a data service layer for service-oriented applications, separating the data layer from the business logic.

The DI suite also contains a data federation server that provides EII functionality and tools. Users use the suite installer to install the EII feature, using Sybase WorkSpace to install the tools.

Copy

The replication component is the data distribution and data synchronization component of the DI suite, which contains all the components of the Sybase replication server. It has the following features:

_ Supports the movement and synchronization of transactional data in heterogeneous databases, including ASE, Oracle, IBM DB2, and Microsoft SQL Server.

_ provides the ability to read any of the above databases and propagates the changes to the same or different target databases.

_ Performance is very high, because the use of reading from the log file database changes, rather than based on the trigger method, so does not affect the normal operation of the database.

_ transactions are propagated from the source database to the target database in real time (that is, the transaction is not submitted to the target database for rollback at the source database). In addition, replication maintains data integrity at the transaction level, ensuring that only full transactions are committed to the target database.

_ Enable bidirectional replication between distributed heterogeneous systems.

_ Allow conversion of data in use as needed.

_ Allows schema changes in the source database to be propagated to the target database.

_ Replication is very flexible, allowing the customer to specify whether to copy the entire database, the entire table, or only the columns specified in the table.