Composite Data Access

Overcoming Silos, Syntax, and Structure

"Data, Data Everywhere” is the title of a report by investment firm Cowen and Company which highlights the proliferation of data over the past decade and how this trend will continue into the next.

“Advances in database and application software over the last two decades have played an enormous role in ushering the information age, but data accessibility has stifled broad usage and effectively limited the utility of the data"

Source: Data, Data Everywhere Nor Any Drop to Drink
Peter Goldmacher and Jim Bao
Publication Date: January 3, 2007
© 2007 Cowen and Company

 

           Source: Cowen and Co

If You Can’t Get to It, You Can’t Use It

You are not alone if you’ve discovered that it is a lot easier to create data than it is to use it.  Access is often the biggest challenge.  Your data is complex, diverse and spread across the enterprise in various technology and application silos. Each source has its own access mechanisms, syntax, security, etc., and few are structured properly for consumption, let alone reuse. 

Composite Radically Simplifies Data Access

The Composite Information Server is a complete development suite that radically simplifies data access. You can use Composite to access data from nearly any kind of source and provide it to nearly any kind of consuming application.

Composite Lets You Access Data in Three Steps

With Composite you can build a reusable data access service in minutes.  The basic process requires just three simple steps:

Step 1: Connect to your existing data

Composite allows you to easily access any number of data sources, including RDBMSs, packaged applications (SAP, Siebel, Oracle EBS, PeopleSoft, Salesforce.com), mainframes, flat files, XML documents, and even existing Web services using pre-built adapters. You can introspect your environment to reveal all the data sources that you have available to use, so you don’t have to be a DBA in order to get started

 

Step 2: Model the new data service

Composite provides easy-to-use graphical design tools to build your data access services. You can build a simple data service that pulls data from an existing data base.  Or you can build a complex data service that federates multiple disparate data sources.  Because you build and test in the same environment, you can quickly iterate your data model to get just the data your consumer requires. 

Step 3: Publish the data access service

After you have completed the data modeling process, you can publish the service as a relational view or a Web service at the click of a button. Composite automatically generates the SQL formatted view for ODBC or JDBC access or WSDL formatted XML document that can be consumed by any SOAP client.  You don’t need to worry about performance.  Composite optimizes queries and transformations for you. 

Lots of Standard Sources, Out of the Box

Composite provides a wide range of data adapters the make access easy.

• JDBC-compliant data sources including:

  IBM DB2 v7, v8

  Informix 9.x

  Microsoft SQL Server 2000, 2005

  MySQL 3.x, 4.x

  Netezza NPS

  Oracle 8i, 9i, 10g, RAC

  Sybase 12.5

• ODBC sources including Microsoft Access and Microsoft Excel

• Application Data Services for the following packaged applications:

  SAP 4.6, 4.7, 5.0, 6.0

  Siebel eBusiness 7.x

  Oracle E-Business Suite 11.5.8, 11.5.9, 11.5.10

  Salesforce.com  

Application Data Services, Access Plus Abstraction.

Beyond simple access, Composite Application Data Services abstract the most common business objects, such as Orders, Invoices, Customers, Shipments, and more and deliver it as standards-based Web services or SQL views to simplify and accelerate development efforts.

All access and updates are done via approved APIs provided by the packaged application vendor.  All work is certified in their partnering programs.  And if appropriate, Composite can also update these sources depending on the API provided.

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