Recently, I've been asked by one of our customers about what is Microsoft doing in the spaces of EII and MDM. Usually, customers who seek for these solutions have multiple data sources and they wish for an integrated view and queries of the entities in the organization.
Before I answer these questions, here's a short recap about the terms:
EII – Enterprise Information Integration - A software that combines various data sources at an enterprise level in order to support applications that present or analyze the data in new ways. EII provides a service that allows administrators, developers, and end-users to treat a broad array of data sources as if they were one large database or data service. EII is software infrastructure not an application. However, it does support the creation of applications.
MDM – Master Data Management - A discipline in Information Technology that focuses on the management of reference or master data that is shared by several disparate IT systems and groups. MDM can be described by the way that master data interacts with other data. Master data can be described by the way that it is created, read, updated, deleted, and searched. For example, in transaction systems, master data is almost always involved with transactional data. A customer buys a product. A vendor sells a part, and a partner delivers a crate of materials to a location. An employee is hierarchically related to their manager, who reports up through a manager (another employee). A product may be a part of multiple hierarchies describing their placement within a store. This relationship between master data and transactional data may be fundamentally viewed as a noun/verb relationship. Transactional data capture the verbs, such as sale, delivery, purchase, email, and revocation; master data are the nouns. This is the same relationship data-warehouse facts and dimensions share.
Btw, if you're confused about the main difference between MDM and EII, I'll state that in MDM the data is shared or duplicated while in EII it is about fedeated data.
So, what does Microsoft has to offer for EII and MDM?
(1) SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) for EII
SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) together with our SQL Server Reporting and Analysis services can provide a premier EII solution. In SQL Server 2008, there have been some significant features added for the EII capabilities such as:
- Enhanced support for different adapters for different data sources in Distributed Query.
- Possibly extend existing set of adapters.
- Improved tool support for Distributed Query.
- Comparable tool support between a solution using consolidation and one using federation.
- Ease of maintenance of simple extensions to the source data.
- Allows definition of the metadata of the complete “integrated view”
- Make it easier to incrementally maintain caches of data.
It is important to note that the adapters allow access to data sources which are not only SQL Server.
(2) Stratature +EDM for MDM
Another solution Microsoft acquired, specifically for the MDM space is Stratature with its +EDM solution.
The current Stratature +EDM solution has a significant set of capabilities such as: a central management of data entities and hierarchies using a master data hub, Data modeling for entities, attributes, hierarchies, and business rules used to store and validate master data and additional capabilies like Thin Client UI, Business Rules, Human Workflow, Versioning, Transaction Logging, Hierarchy Mangement, Subscription Interface and Security.
The next version, codenamed "Bulldog" is about making Stratature +EDM a Microsoft product. Bulldog will remain almost identical to +EDM with some enhancements. Microsoft plans to improve the out of box experience, simplify setup and perform the full suite of prerelease processes such as security reviews. In addition, Microsoft will extend +EDM with improvements to the API, better integration into other applications, and better integration with the Microsoft data platform. The solution is expected to become more integrated with the current solutions including SQL Server and Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server.
For more information about Microsoft's roadmap in the MDM space, visit here.
I'd like to recommend a book which can be viewed as the most up-to-date comprehensive architecture guide for software applications developed using Microsoft .NET technologies. As it says in the introduction to the book: "The purpose of the Application Architecture Guide 2.0 is to improve your effectiveness when building applications on the Microsoft platform. The primary audience for this guide is solution architects and development leads. The guide provides design-level guidance for the architecture and design of applications built on the Microsoft .NET platform. It focuses on the most common types of applications and on partitioning application functionality into layers, components, and services, and also walks through their key design characteristics."
This is a must-read book for any .NET architect.
Download here.
This has been an exciting week.
In addition to the ImagineCup competition, Microsoft in Israel has also launched DreamSpark.
DreamSpark is a Microsoft global initiative to allow FREE ACCESS TO MS SOFTWARE for students in Israel.
Students in the Technion thought there was a catch here, but believe me there isn't.
We just want students to expereince MS software while studying to develop.
The program gives access to Visual Studio, SQL Server, Windows Server, Expression Tools and more for the duration of the studies.
To register, follow this link, fill in your details and verify that you're a student. After verified, you'll be able to download the tools.
Microsoft in Israel with the Israeli students union is excited to launch ImagineCup in Israel for the first time.
ImagineCup is the Microsoft International competition for students studying computer sciences and engineering.
The competition is between more than a hundred thousand students across 180 countries who submit projects whose purpose is to answer one of the challenges the world is facing today.
On May 20th, we will host the Israeli finals from which we'll choose the winners who will win great prizes.
The 1st place winner will be sent by Microsoft to represent Israel in the worldwide finals.
Students from Israel, we invite you to register your ideas until January 20th!
You are also welcome to register a project you are working on as part of your studies in case it answers the requirements published in the site.
