Smart Data Integration - Solving the data lineage problem with semantic technology

Provenance and lineage. Two wonderful words, used interchangeably, to describe a sticky problem for most large financial institutions. That is, what is the origin, meaning and quality of my data? These questions are becoming increasingly important as data is sourced from more disparate locations, regulators demand an audit trail for reporting and more data is exposed to internal and external consumers.

Traditional data integration approaches typically focus on moving data point-to-point and do a poor job of tracking the full lifecycle of data. Cambridge Semantics is at the forefront of a new approach to enterprise data integration that solves these problems using semantic technologies. We call this Smart Data Integration. 

By deploying a semantic layer across existing infrastructure, you can build a full picture of your information landscape and lifecycle while preserving your existing infrastructure investments. In addition, you can achieve other critical benefits:

• Dramatically lower the time and cost to onboard new customers and data sources
• Support industry standard, business consumable, operationally agile enterprise data models (e.g.., FIBO)
• Put highly interactive, business friendly data consumption in the hands of business users
• Expose full enterprise-wide data provenance necessary for business and regulatory reporting

Cambridge Semantics is developing a set of tools on our semantic platform Anzo to deliver Smart Data Integration:

·         Business Analyst Mapping Tool

The mapping tool allows a business analyst to connect to source and target data systems, ingest schemas and review sample data. Using a familiar Excel based interface, the BA can map source to target fields and capture any required transformations using context sensitive wizards.

·         Business Conceptual Model

During the mapping process, the BA has the option to map the source data to a target conceptual model, for example, the Financial Industry Business Ontology (FIBO).

·         Automatic ETL Generation

Once the mapping process is complete, the map is saved for cataloging and reuse. At this point, the BA can also click a button to automatically create an ETL job for their tool of choice (e.g., Pentaho Kettle, Talend, Informatica etc.). The ETL job is created from the mapping without any coding or manual intervention.

·         Analyst Dashboards

The BAs have full access to the target data and conceptual model through Anzo’s web dashboards. They can search on fields and get data provenance visualizations that show where data came from and what transformations were performed on it.

·         Business User Dashboards

Business users also have full access to the target data and conceptual model through Anzo’s web dashboards. This provide interactive data search, visualization and investigation capabilities.

To learn more about Smart Data Integration, contact me at marty@cambridgesemantics.com or join our webinar on October 10^{th, 2013} at 2pm for an overview and demo of Smart Data Integration - Semantic-model driven Enterprise Data Integration and Data Governance

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/8791073005097461249