Clickstream

When to Consolidate and When to Federate

The will be on data consolidation versus virtualization and the fact that we're starting to need both in the data warehouse (hence the "hybrid data warehouse" in the title).

On-demand access to current data or operational details requires some rethinking of infrastructure. If we want to physically consolidate the data then we need to rethink the extract mechanisms, schemas, storage models and even delivery interfaces to client applications.

The assumption is no longer true that data should always be stored in a central warehouse database. We have technologies that open up access to whole new realms of data: spreadsheets, files, web pages, messages, XML, images, standard industry formats. Centralizing this content isn’t required to manage the schema and relationships for these things – often it can’t.

Data federation / EII tools provide an option that lets us centralize most of the data, but provide access to information that can't easily be consolidated. Unlike direct access to the native sources, these tools allow us to mediate access and provide a single point of management and reuse.

The webcast will go into some more detail on methods of consolidation and where federated access makes sense. Wednesday at 9:00 AM, Pacific.

Labels: data federation, data integration, EII, events

Posted by Mark Sunday, March 18, 2007 7:11:00 PM | permalink |