Data Integration and ETL News

26 March , 2008

Despite what many people tend to think, mashups are not just grabbing someoneÂs Web content. A well-made mashup is actually a brand new information resource, which is unique, genuine, and represents a greater value than its single components. If the mashup fails to meet the above-mentioned conditions, one can write it off as a dustbin full of informational garbage. Users are willing to pay only for those mashups that are of some value either for business or fun. In other words, the resource is worth considering when the idea of a certain mashup, the idea to combine these very components, makes sense. Nobody is interested in a mashup that transforms a number of useful Web sites into a huge useless mess.

In this post, I will describe the top three drivers influencing the adoption of Web 2.0 in Enterprise 2.0. In my next post, I will express my opinion on whether mashups are capable of pushing Web 2.0 into the enterprise arena. Trend #1: Shift to Cloud Computing In “cloud computing,” documents and business information are managed online. [...]

A few months ago, prior to the release of the Apatar Community Preview, Matt Asay asked me via email whether Apatar competes with ESB products, specifically with MuleSource and ServiceMix. After I responded to Matt by email, I thought about posting my response to a blog, and Matt said, “Go ahead.” In fact, two people [...]

February 5, 2008

Apatar, a provider of open source software tools for the data integration market, announced the availability of StrikeIron Email Verification connector for the Apatar Open Source Data Integration toolset. The new feature is designed to determine the validity of an email address or domain using StrikeIron Web Services.

It allows Apatar users to easily cleanse customer data by validating and filtering emails extracted from databases (such as MySQL, Microsoft SQL, Oracle), files (Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, CSV/TXT files), applications (Salesforce.com, SugarCRM), and the top Web 2.0 destinations (Flickr, Amazon S3, RSS feeds).

The StrikeIron Email Verification service allows users to instantly determine the validity of an email address or domain, reduce spam by blocking emails that are sent from invalid email addresses, and ensure that email addresses are validated before they are entered into a database or before a mailing is sent.

ÂWhen you are sending out emails, the last thing you want to do is send bad emails out to a server because it will get you blacklisted and it will not let your good emails through. If a server is out there and it gets a ton of bad emails from you it is going to say, 'no, these guys are spamming,' Â Jane Foreman, director of marketing, StrikeIron, told 5 Minute Briefing. ÂIt reduces the amount time you are spending on sending email out, it improves the quality of actually delivering the email, and when you combine it with Apatar, it puts all of this into the business user's hands. They know they have better leads so they can get their outbound programs out...

The effort is aimed at convincing businesses that the enterprise middleware product is secure and reliable.

Found a great post by Paul Weinberg observing a recent survey report by Taneja Group, storage and server industry analysts. They surveyed 238 IT decision-makers in North America and Great Britain around different industries. To give you an idea about the audience, I’d quote that “53 percent of users had 11 terabytes or more of unstructured data in their environments”.

So, what’s the state of corporate information in today’s enterprises? 62 percent of the respondents reported that the unstructured data within their companies was growing between 16 and 75 percent per year. Despite the fact that the dispersion in this result is definitely too wide, this seems to be true.

Taneja discovered that the major drivers for unstructured data growth among survey respondents are Microsoft Office (78 percent), e-mail attachments (66 percent), and backup and archival (81 percent combined).

As you can see, enterprises are still sufering from files disintegration. For them, it is still a challenge to manage e-mail attachments and MS Excel spreadsheets as a part of one-view structure or SOA.

Furthermore, Steve Norall, senior analyst at the Taneja Group, is inclined to think that people are not going to move all of the data into a single storage space. Why?.. Due to huge expenses. (Yep, yep, the open source middleware is a Joker here.) So, he predicts that file management and integration companies will benefit from this and “should prosper”.

Finally, the majority of respondents expected their file management and control budgets would grow by up to 20 percent in the next 12 months […]

This means the problem is really a headache and the executives are ready to pay for a solution. Besides the adoption of open source data integration and file management software, I expect that any related services are going to be on...

Have you heard the news of the day? Sun Microsystems acquires MySQL. The two open source monsters are converging to deliver services and evolve together. “Being part of Sun will give MySQL more resources for everything from development, support, services, sales and marketing,” Zack Urlocker, Executive Vice President of Products at MySQL, said.

This acquision will surely accelerate the further adoption of MySQL and strengthen Sun’s credibility as an open source leader. Community members are already wondering, who will by Sun afterwards. =) Oracle? Or maybe Google?

I’m personally interested to know if the guys are planning to offer any new technology solutions for Java platform and MySQL database. Another question is how will the deal change the communities. Though Zack claims that for Sun “it is a part of an overall strategy to change the world”, it would be interesting to know WHAT actually is going to be changed.

Any predictions or thoughts?

With the deal done, BEA customers contemplate their fate. Which camp made out better, and what should CIOs and IT managers be doing to prepare for the new era of middleware?

Oracle hopes that acquiring middleware vendor BEA will allow it to improve its own middleware suite, Fusion.

Dear fellows, inviting you to read the technical article I’ve written for TechRepublic. Complete with diagrams, this how-to guide covers 5 steps necessary for building an integration with Salesforce.com.

“If you’re considering or currently administering a SalesForce.com account, this article may help you explore how to integrate your CRM data between SalesForce.com and in-house databases, flat files, and legacy applications. Here’s a deep look at how to get the job done without having to study SalesForce.com APIs and writing, debugging, and maintaining custom code.”

Read the full article at http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/datacenter/?p=265