Alicornio Africa (formerly Sagent Southern Africa), local consulting and distribution specialists for information integration software Sagent, have announced the release of the most recent version of the Sagent Data Flow product. Specifically designed for medium to large enterprises with Information Integration, Extract, Transform and Load as well as Information Delivery requirements, the Sagent Data Flow is considered as the most open, robust and extended versions so far, according to Susan Andrè, Managing Director of Alicornio Africa.
Version 5 of Sagent Data Flow boasts a variety of new features that will improve productivity and ROI for traditional ETL and BI customers as well as new clients with information integration needs. Due to the fact that data proliferation is an increasingly complex and expensive business challenge, Ms Andrè say’s, “Many companies dealing with large volumes of data are realising that they can no longer afford the time and enormous expense of solving information integration problems internally. While much can be said for internally developed software and systems, the argument and need for a complete solution, ready to use, is getting stronger daily.”
Sagent Data Flow is an open and unique technology in that it can be effortlessly integrated and implemented with third party applications and other existing software. To this tune, Sagent V5 boasts further improvement as an embeddable technology that seamlessly fits into deployed business information systems. The key to this technology say’s Andre, “Is its ability to interface with web based services, SOAP, XML, SNMP, ODBC, JDBC and the next best thing.” Andre goes on to add, “That the technology is open, it means that flexible licensing, installation and labeling options are available when incorporating Data Flow into any packaged application. Ultimately Sagent V5 can very easily become and integrated element in literally any environment.”
In terms of the embeddabilty and openness of the product, the newly improved installation procedure provides an excellent means of solution providers incorporating Sagent V5 cleanly into their installation. By including a Sagent Data Flow Repository for single users, Sagent V5 Data Flow also provides for small implementations of single licensed users. Another enhancement includes the Data Flow License Server, developed to further simplify the administration, maintenance and updating of user licenses for the entire Data Flow environment.
Listening to and meeting client needs is paramount for both Alicornio Africa and international partners Group 1 and therefore requested improvements to the product have also been implemented. These include, but are not limited to, upgrading the Automation feature which boasts various new attributes including user logon management, pass of parameterised variables and a web based administrative interface. For users preferring to include manual or ‘hand coded’ SQL statements, the newly enhanced Schema Declaration allows users to effortlessly do this, without loosing the schema information that makes the Sagent so easy to use. This characteristic allows users to add hints, calls to stored procedures or other optimizations to the SQL generated by Sagent Data Flow, while maintaining the ability to select column information in other downstream transformations.
In addition, the Data Mapping transform function allows users to visually map input columns to the transform to a predefined output schema, and therefore giving developers the ability to easily map complex data flow schemas to existing database structures.
In the spirit of ongoing development and product improvement, the Sagent WebLink component as been enhanced for increased reliability and scalability. It also offers the possibility of easier problem diagnosis through turning the WebLink server into its own process outside of the web server it is linked to. Sagent version 5 is released and available immediately.
Sagent Data Flow version 6 is due to be released early in 2005 with an array of additional major functionality features and enhancements. For a product demonstration or further enquiries, contact Susan Andre at Alicornio Africa on (011) 258 8739 or email Susana@alicornio.co.za
About Alicornio Africa:
Alicornio Africa is a specialist Information Integration and Business Intelligence consultancy and is the local distributor and implementation specialist for the Sagent Solution. The Sagent Solution is a patented information integration technology suite which fundamentally changes the way that data warehouses are built and accessed. The Sagent Solutions’ unique data flow server enables business users to easily extend the structure of a data warehouse with new analytics that support immediate business needs. This technology is at the core of Alicornio Africa’s ETL, EII and business intelligence solutions, as well as multiple partner solutions that address the needs of specific vertical and functional application areas. In addition to the distribution of this technology, Alicornio Africa also support and distribute the Doc 1 suite, a unique Customer Communications Management tool which enables mass targeted messaging en masse. Doc1 has been specifically designed for document creation processes; core competencies of this product include content design, generation, presentation, printing, archive, retrieval and electronic payment. By combining Doc1 power objects with a self-documenting logic map, developers are able to create and produce dynamic communications using a browser-based design tool. Doc1’s workflow helps to track the project status through design, approval, unit testing, system and acceptance testing and production process management.