why evaluate expressor

Why evaluate expressor?
An analyst’s opinion and demo of the new expressoreval edition
September 24, 2009

agenda
data integration trends, analysis of expressor
Philip Howard, research director, Bloor Research
expressor eval edition demonstration
John Lifter, PhD, senior manager of education, expressor software
q&a
copyright © 2009 expressor software corporation
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telling the Information Management story
Why evaluate expressor?
Philip Howard
Research Director – Bloor Research
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Agenda
Agenda
In Bloor Research’s recent report on expressor software we reported that:“anyone needing to process high volumes of data and/or needing to support complex processes should immediately put expressor on their short list of data integration products to consider.”
Why?
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First: some trends
First: some trends
Historically, many companies have continued to use hand coding rather than tools for data integration
This is a sustainable, if questionable, position when thinking of data integration as a tool for developers
Data Integration Solutions
But data integration solely as a development process perpetuates the business/IT mismatch
Source: Bloor Research
So, a major trend is to drive development from the business in the first instance: to make data integration a collaborative process
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A second trend
A second trend
Growing data volumes mean growing pressure on batch windows, which, in turn, puts an emphasis on performance and real-time processing
“Operational data integration is a quickly expanding practice that organizations need to focus on now.”
--TDWI, Q2 2009
NB: real-time processing is more efficient
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Why have we recommended expressor?
Why have we recommended expressor?
Semantics
Logical/physical separation
Collaboration
Debugging
Management by subject
Parallelism
Compliance
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Semantics
Semantics
…is important because it encourages collaboration and speeds up development
Ships with 10,000 terms and equivalents
Uses synonym rings and algorithms
Bulk import from external sources with syntax checking and validation
Customizable
Fuzzy matching (will make suggestions)
Automates mapping
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…is important because it enables collaboration
Business analysts can develop processes without needing to understand the structure of the data
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Collaboration
Collaboration
…is important because it removes business/IT mismatch
Wizard-driven and spreadsheet-style interfaces for business analysts to define business rules and test cases
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Debugging
Debugging
…is important because you can test processing logic without having to connect to the actual data
You can test against production or historical data if you want to
If you test against real data, values are protected from unauthorized users
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…is important because it helps both reuse and collaboration
expressor includes a repository for storing project artifacts (semantics, rules, run-time details)
It has the usual features you would expect in a repository
It organizes artifacts by project
In addition, you can associate artifacts by subject area (banking, account, country)—100+ pre-defined
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Parallelism
Parallelism
…is important because it is not an add-on
Same engine for batch and real-time
Implicit and explicit parallelism, pipeline parallelism, depth parallelism, parallel partitioning
Intra-node parallelism rather than inter-node at present
Channel-based pricing model
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Compliance
Compliance
…is important because it enables data protection during testing
A separate read-only copy of relevant repository data is kept for reporting purposes
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But …
expressor is a new product: you would not expect it to be complete yet
Lacks scheduling (planned)—can use 3rd party
Supports real-time but not change data capture from relational sources (shortly)
Doesn’t yet support inter-node parallelism (planned)
But…
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Conclusion
Conclusion
expressor is potentially disruptive
to the market
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expressor software
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founded in 2003
smart, fast, affordable data integration software
led by experienced management team
technical founders have very strong data warehousing and DI background
received $16M in funding; main investors are Commonwealth Capital Ventures, Globespan Capital Partners and Sigma Partners
shipped expressor 2.0 June 17
announced eval edition September 8
smart semanticstm
breakthrough scalability
total lifecycle management

expressor semantic data integration systemtm
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smart semanticstm
enable efficient reuse of business rules and
true, collaborative team development
ultra-fast parallel processing engine
sustained throughput of 2.8TB/hour
reaching up to 11.4TB/hour
supports batch and low-latency environments
affordable licensing
60-80% less than comparable solutions
usage-based pricing
term and perpetual options

ftp
odbc
xml files
SAS
rdbms
DW appliances
flat files
messaging queues
Swift
EDI
time series
WSDL
SAP IDOC
LDAP

expressor eval edition
free, hosted version of expressor illustrator targeted at ETL developers
30-day evaluation
comes with four tutorial applications, documentation, and training videos
free technical support
open to end-user and partner companies in English-speaking countries & expressor reseller territories
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expressor eval edition live demonstration
the free, hosted eval edition lets you take expressor for a test drive
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thank you!
www.expressor-software.com