Talend Introduces Open Source Data Profiler
Talend yesterday announced what it describes as the first open source data profiler, which enables companies to assess the quality of data and decide which actions must be taken to correct problems.
“There are two big problems that enterprises are facing regarding data quality,” Yves de Montcheuil, vice president of marketing, Talend, told 5 Minute Briefing.
“The first is that in order to embark on a successful data integration project they need to understand what is in their database - what is in their sources, what is in their targets. And by that I mean not only understanding the structure of the data which is something already covered in our data integration solutions, but also know what is inside - what kind of good or bad quality data you have,” said de Montcheuil.
“The other
concern the solution addresses is for people who are in charge of
managing the data contained inside a system,” he said. “You
need to know the level of quality of your data, you need to know
whether your sales rep has the right phone numbers to call customers,
whether your products are properly described. Then when you fix
the quality, you need to go back again and run the same profiling
and see if the quality of the data is actually improving or degrading.”
Talend Open Profiler’s key features include metadata discovery, which identifies the structure of the databases that need to be analyzed; statistics definition, which defines the statistics and metrics that need to be measured on each data item; and results and graphs to make it easy to view the results and assess the level of quality of the data.
“There is no affordable enterprise-capable standalone data profiling solution on the market today,” said de Montcheuil. “Open source changes this equation.”
Talend also offers the Talend Open Studio, the flagship data integration product provided at no cost under a GPL license; Talend Integration Suite, a subscription-based service that extends the functionality of Talend Open Studio; and Talend On Demand, the first Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) open data integration solution.
“Our main focus until now has been data integration,” said de Montcheuil. “We are enlarging this focus now to cover several aspects of data management but of course we will continue to focus on data integration, where we are very successful.”
Talend Open Profiler is available immediately at no cost under a GPL license. To download, go here.
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New Composite Discovery Appliance Helps Enterprise Business Users Discover Information
Composite Software, a virtual data integration leader, has unveiled a new appliance called Composite Discovery which is intended to help non-technical business users who normally depend on IT teams to access data for analysis and decision-making. The Discovery appliance allows users to quickly quickly “discover” the business-critical information they need, delivered with the relevant data relationships context, regardless of data source or location.
“The idea here is that there is a certain amount of unanticipated requirements, new requirements, short- term requirements - that haven't really been addressed by IT with existing reporting and we can take care of a percentage of that work, freeing IT to work on the more long-term repeatable projects,” Robert Eve, vice president of marketing, Composite Software, told 5 Minute Briefing.
The solution leverages key elements of BI and enterprise search to help users easily get to and work with source data and intermediate stores such as warehouses and marts. Discovery provides visibility into the data without the time-intensive set-up traditionally involved, while enriching enterprise search with IP that delivers data relationship discovery.
Among Composite Discovery’s key features are search functionality for finding structured data; data relationship discovery that reveals relationships among the information contained in disparate sources and delivers this context with the data, so users can easily identify what’s relevant; drag and drop tools that make it easy to view and work with data in a familiar tabular format; high-performance query optimization and integration with Microsoft Excel to maximize the user experience; “recipes” for repeatable searches, as well as Enterprise 2.0 information support for greater collaboration and higher productivity; and a range of security options including integration with LDAP and Active Directory to ensure compliance with IT data security and governance mandates.
Composite Discovery can be used as a stand-alone appliance, and, when integrated with the Composite Information Server, Composite Discovery leverages developed views and other virtual stores that abstract and federate complex data including data from SAP, Siebel, Oracle, PeopleSoft and salesforce.com using Composite Application Data Services.
Available now,
Composite Discovery is sold as an appliance, including hardware
and software, with two pricing models: perpetual use and monthly
subscription. Support is included with both pricing models,
said Eve. “Because it is an appliance we can automatically
download all the patches and upgrades and improvements, so we really
take a lot of the maintenance burden off of IT. To download a data
sheet, go here.
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Sybase iAnywhere Expands Security for Handheld Devices
Sybase announced yesterday that Sybase Information Anywhere Suite's Afaria management and security solution will be enhanced with antivirus and firewall technology, addressing growing concern over an increase in malware, viruses, hackers and spam targeting handheld devices. Currently there are over 500 documented mobile viruses and they are on the increase, Mark Jordan, senior product manager at iAnywhere, told 5 Minute Briefing. “These new capabilities are going to address the growing concern that we are starting to see in the enterprise over the increase in viruses, hacker attacks, and spam, as well.”
The new security components, combined with mobile device authentication and encryption technology, provide complete protection for Windows Mobile, Symbian and Blackberry mobile devices from viruses, data compromise, hackers and the effects of mobile device loss or theft. “By covering Windows Mobile, Symbian and Blackberry, “ he said, “we have given our customers a broad device support so no matter what their environment is like they can manage and secure from a single console.”
As part of Afaria Antivirus Manager, there is full antivirus protection with automatic signature file updates, assuring the most up to date protection; and real-time virus detection on any file received. Additionally, said Jordan, based on heuristic technology there is now behavior-based security targeting mobile devices. “Nobody has been able to do this on the handheld side because of the resource constraints but we have been able to add this technology to our software without sacrificing device performance or battery usage.”
Afaria Firewall Manager enables IP based firewall protection giving IT administrators control with black list or white list filtering of inbound and outbound communications. This allows a company to “lock down” use of the device for authorized business communications only and/or protect the device from possible infection through typical web-surfing. And with the growing issue of spam, said Jordan, “we have SMS, MMS and call filtering capabilities, as well.” This allows administrators to blacklist specific phone numbers or short codes to block spam and also allows users a certain degree of control to build their blacklist themselves, he explained.
“We are the first and only mobile device management company offering this breadth of security technology,” said Jordan. The new Afaria antivirus and firewall protection capabilities will be available by the end of June 2008. For more information, go here.
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Imperva Extends Application Security Lifecycle to Production System
Imperva, a leader in application data security, has announced a closed loop solution for managing the Web application security lifecycle on production systems. The Imperva SecureSphere Web Application Firewall (WAF), through bi-directional integration with vulnerability scanning tools from Cenzic, HP, IBM, and NT Objectives, is intended to address application security from quality assurance/testing into production. According to the vendor, this combination addresses the requirements of the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS) which mandates that organizations deploy a WAF or perform an application code review by June 30.
SecureSphere accepts vulnerability updates from application scanning tools. In addition, its patent-pending Dynamic Profiling technology automatically detects and documents application changes in live applications and forwards this information to scanners. This capability extends the scope of application security lifecycle management by enabling the continuous scanning and assessment of large-scale applications in production environments.
With the PCI Security Standards Council's recently published Information Supplement: Requirement 6.6 Code Reviews and Application Firewalls Clarified, “basically the customer has an option either to implement the Web application firewall or to do regular automatic code reviews which is basically scanning for vulnerabilities of the applications, so there is an either/or approach in the PCI,” Shlomo Kramer, president and CEO of Imperva, told 5 Minute Briefing.
“We really believe that the right approach is an inclusive approach that says you need both to be able to develop secure applications," Kramer said. "You need both to be able to find where the vulnerabilities of these applications are, but you also need to be able to protect the application in production because applications will never be perfect and will always have security issues in them. Even if you find these security issues, the window to fix them is very wide and sometimes even impossible when these are third-party applications or legacy applications.”
According to Imperva, the turnkey integration of SecureSphere with Cenzic Hailstorm enterprise vulnerability testing and management software, HP/SPI WebInspect web application security testing software, IBM/Watchfire AppScan Web application security testing suite, and the NT Objectives NTOSpider Web application vulnerability assessment tool is expected in August 2008. In addition to these integrations, Imperva will deliver a set of open interfaces via the OpenSphere data security ecosystem program. These APIs will allow other technology vendors to take advantage of the ability to merge SecureSphere's production security and monitoring capabilities with other parts of the security lifecycle. For more information, go here.
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Texas Memory Systems Enhances RAM Solid State Disk Availability
Texas Memory Systems, a storage systems provider, has been granted a patent for its Instant-On Input-Output (IO*) technology, which it said enables immediate access to data from a RAM-based Solid State Disk (SSD) after a unit is powered on. Without this technology, the company stated, a half-terabyte of data could take up to two hours to be available from SSD memory after a power outage.
Texas Memory Systems' RamSan products enable organizations to manage high transaction volumes and larger numbers of users using fewer servers, thereby increasing performance while lowering cost and administration efforts. They are used in the financial, telecom, e-commerce, and online-gaming industries, as well as government, military, and research organizations. "In all of those spaces, they are used to accelerate databases,” Jamon Bowen, sales engineer for Texas Memory Systems, told 5 Minute Briefing. “In general, our products are used for the most important, most profitable, most critical applications inside an organization. If maintenance is required, our products can shut the system down, and turn it back on after maintenance quickly. This is important, Bowen said, “because maintenance windows for the most important applications tend to be the most tightly controlled."
According to Texas Memory, the growing size of mission-critical databases and the falling cost of solid state disks have increased demand for high-capacity SSDs, creating the need for the new technology. A traditional SSD must wait for data to be entirely loaded from internal backup hard disk drives to the RAM storage area before the data is accessible. For smaller SSDs, the loss in availability is small. Without IO², large capacity SSDs are impractical because availability could be lost for up to two hours just to load data from disk to memory.
"This is something that hasn't been as issue as solid state disks have been so small before but as they are pushing the envelope to bigger and bigger capacities, it's a real problem that had to be solved," said Bowen. The new IO² technology "works hand in hand" with Texas Memory's Active Backup technology that lets the systems shut down much more quickly, he added.
Texas Memory Systems' Instant-On Input-Output technology will be available as a licensable feature on upcoming RamSan SSDs. For more information, go here.
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