Posts Tagged ‘Astera Software’

Source Control In Centerprise

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

With Centerprise’s file system approach, putting meta data files such as transfers and dataflows under source control was always possible.  But now, we’ve added a built-in, fully-functional source control client right in the studio UI.  If you’re familiar with Microsoft’s Visual Studio, you’re probably already familiar the concept of integrated source control and know how much not having to switch between applications means to  your overall productivity.  Centerprise follows the same model and thus, now allows you to work at the file level (dataflows) as well as the project level (Centerprise projects) all within the same UI and all under source control.

Combined with Centerprise’s project feature, the new source control features are a perfect fit resulting in a more collaborative, team-based approach to data integration projects.  With source control built-in, you can now be working on a dataflow, re-factor a complicated dataflow, check-in your project, and when your colleague clicks the “get latest” button, he or she will instantly see  your work and thus be on the same page.  Some of the basic features include:

  • Check-in, check-out on all project files such as dataflows, workflows, SQL files, etc.
  • Get specific versions of files and projects including the latest version
  • View change history
  • Conflict resolution for when changes overlap.
  • Undo pending changes
  • Full source control explorer

Currently, Centerprise works with Microsoft’s Team Foundation Server for its version control back-end, but other systems such as Rational’s Clear Case and Subversion are scheduled to be included in an upcoming point release.  Please contact sales@astera.com for more info.

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Centerprise 5 Beta Release is now available

Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010

I am pleased to announce that Centerprise Data Integrator 5 beta is now available for download. This release represents a major upgrade and adds sophisticated dataflow and workflow designers. We are very excited about this release and the great deal of value it can add to our customers’ business.

Centerprise 5 represents an attractive alternative to exorbitant cost of traditional data integration vendors and not-ready-for-primetime products offered at the lower end of the market.

Over the past year, we have had extensive discussions with customers from a variety of industries including financial services, pharmaceutical, healthcare, utilities, and government. Centerprise team used this feedback and other research to develop and improve product from many perspectives. Usability, always a hallmark of Centerprise, has been improved further with the addition of flow designers that provide drag and drop capabilities, unlimited undo/redo, cut/copy/paste, and parameterization, among others. Performance has been enhanced by further increasing parallelism and optimizing a number of areas including database writes and file reads. A new set of APIs enables customers and partners to extend Centerprise by adding new sources, destinations, transformations, and custom functions.

Here are the key features:

  • A Dataflow designer that supports complex data integration flows and features full complement of transformations including lookups, expressions, functions, aggregate, sort, join, normalize, denormalize, union, route, filter, and others.
  • Subflows to create reusable dataflow components that can be plugged into dataflows or other subflows.
  • Single-click WYSIWYG data view capability to preview data at any stage in data flow.
  • Integrated data quality validation and profiling.
  • Integrated drag and drop environment with unlimited undo/redo, cut/copy/paste, automatic layout building, auto map creation, one click element addition, and more.
  • A visual Workflow designer for defining job orchestration. Workflow designer provides the functionality to define job sequence, routing, and dependencies.
  • Restart capability to resume a job from the point of failure.
  • Workflow provides built-in tasks to run Dataflow, Workflow, SQL, or other programs, perform file systems actions, FTP actions, send mail, and others. Additional tasks can be created using Centerprise APIs.
  • Built-in job scheduler to start jobs at recurring intervals including hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly. Jobs can also be triggered based on file drop and through APIs.
  • High-performance parallel processing engine optimized to deliver the performance and scalability required to efficiently process very high data volumes.

If you would like to participate in Centerprise beta program, please register here:

Or you can call us at 1-888-77-ASTERA begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              1-888-77-ASTERA      end_of_the_skype_highlighting (1-805-579-004) or email sales@astera.com.

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New Workflow Coming to Centerprise

Tuesday, April 20th, 2010

As you may know, we’re busy working on the next edition of Centerprise Data Integrator.  Part of that effort includes a brand new way we will be handling data workflows.  In the currently released version of Centerprise, you pick your data source and then your destination.  Anything beyond this fixed flow is handled with a combination of plug-ins and batch transfers.  The upcoming version of Centerprise opens this up completely.

The new workflow in Centerprise will allow for various  actions to be laid out in a flow-chart like fashion to be executed sequentially.  Need to upload a file to an FTP site and then send out an email on the completion of your dataflow processing?  No problem.  Just drag and drop these two tasks onto our new workflow diagram and link them together in the desired sequence.  You can pretty much create any workflow process imaginable with this new flexibility and, as always, we’re allowing for custom workflow actions written in .NET for further extensibility.  It is our very propensity for extensibility which is a big part of why were adding this feature set to the product.

In the last two iterations of Centerprise, customers have taken advantage of our API and written some pretty clever plug-ins to, in essence, write their own workflow into the data transfer process.  While we’re glad our customers find this feature useful, we know a need when we see one.  So we’re introducing the usual workflow suspects such as FTP, Email, Run SQL Statement, Run Exe as well as some looping and switching mechanisms.  We’re very excited about this effort and we think you will be too.  Let us know what you think and/or any thing you’d like to see in our new workflow engine.

workflowshot

The image above shows a simple example.  In this scenario, the first task is downloading a file from an ftp directory (all properties for this task are set in a separate editor in the exact same way was dataflow tasks).  After the file is downloaded from the FTP directory, the file is copied to a folder that services a dataflow which is the third task in the queue.  The next action is the “Decision” which is a simple expression that routes the flow depending on the results of the dataflow.  If successful, an SQL script is run on a database.  If not, an email is sent to the appropriate individual.

It’s pretty simple and extremely flexible.  This combined with the fact that you can write your own workflow actions should make this component a lifesaver.  I’ll be writing more about this component in the coming weeks.

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Usability Matters

Friday, April 16th, 2010

I often read user surveys on corporate software products and see usability ranked fourth or fifth as a selection criterion for these products. Is it any wonder then that corporate software still remains difficult to learn and use even as consumer hardware and software products are undergoing a major revolution in usability?

If you compare today’s phones, consumer oriented websites, and other technology products with those from just five years ago, you will notice remarkable leaps in the overall user experience. On the other hand, most business software products look like they were designed around early 1990s or before. It is not uncommon to have to go through bulky user manuals and weeks long training before these products can be used.

While researching data integration products recently, I found that many of these products were difficult to use and required significant learning curve to get started. Some of the products I came across had over 200+ buttons visible on the screen!

I believe that benefits of superior usability are generally understated and underestimated. A well designed product improves productivity in ways small and large. An intuitive product seems familiar even to a new user. In most cases, you just know how to use it. For companies where job functions are frequently distributed between business users and IT staff primarily because business users do not have expertise in certain tools, a well-designed product can blur those lines by enabling business users to perform these tasks directly.

At Astera, we put great deal of emphasis on making our products easy to learn and use. Our goal is to build data conversion and data integration products that can be used by business experts while providing all the hooks and features required for serious development. With “Hermes”, the upcoming Centerprise version, we have preserved the same intuitive, clutter-free user interface while adding a great deal of power.

For instance, dataflow and workflow designers support cut, copy, paste, unlimited undo/redo, dynamic creation of layouts, global replacement for database connections and file paths, and numerous other usability features that are notably absent from other data integration products.

Other notable features are one click WYSIWYG instant preview and Quick Profile. Data Preview and Quick Profile are invaluable debugging aids that speed up your development and testing.

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