cooper to logan - expressor software's semantic data integration blog

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April 20, 2009

share, share, it's only fair

One of the questions I hear most often when talking to customers, partners, analysts or reporters is, "What does expressor mean by 'semantic' rationalization?" "Semantic" has quickly become one of those popular terms that is often misused or misunderstood if not placed in the proper technology or business context.

I am not a marketing expert, but as the inventor of the expressor processor and original metamodel, it seemed obvious to me that the expressor "semantic" model could bridge the disconnect between the IT and business units and unite these two worlds.

Now this is where things get interesting. When we first introduced expressor, some people compared our semantic rationalization process to IBM's "Business Glossary." More recently, I heard that Informatica will soon roll out its own version of "semantic rationalization."

So we must be onto something. And frankly, I can't wait to see what Informatica's offering looks like. Good thing we already filed our patents.

But back to what expressor means by semantic metadata rationalization. We mean a system built from the ground up with a consistent view and treatment of metadata for increased ease-of-use. expressor's unified and solitary metadata repository solution enables real data governance.

By comparison, other vendors' "bolt-on" metadata solutions produce non-compatible metadata from different tools within the same system. This inconsistency and redundancy can actually prevent a business from using its metadata.

So forget about runtime performance for a few minutes, if you can, and think about the amount of time it takes your organization to turn data into information.

- john russell, chief scientist and co-founder

Posted by expressor software at 11:45 AM | Comments (0)

April 13, 2009

broadcasting on all channels

just got back from a day trip to beautiful boulder colorado. direct flight, no delays,
nice people. not many trips like that anymore.

so let me set the stage. the may 2008 TDWI show in chicago. our company, expressor software, is at TDWI to launch the company and our 1.0 product. as part of this process we set up a breakfast meeting with claudia imhoff. she indicates that she has a group if DI/BI experts (the Boulder BI Brain Trust, or BBBT) that meet with emerging companies to discuss the industry and how said company might be more successful. i am all ears. the problem, the waiting list is 11 months. ouch!

well, the wait was worth it. let me tell you why. the chance to sit with a CTO, CIO, implementers, directors, pundits, and let's throws a couple of PhDs into the mix also, does not come up every day. frank discussion about the industry, marketing, sales and technology with no pulled punches is exactly what a startup company needs.

in fact, it is what every company needs to do - listen.

this meeting was invaluable to our future in the data integration industry. our model for success has been very simple to date. listen closely, clarify, solve and succeed. maybe it is just the culture brought into the company at inception. perhaps it is that without the luxury of having thousands of customers we still believe that the customer does come first.

click here to listen to the interview Claudia conducted with me while we were in boulder last week or here to read the blog richard hackathorn posted about expressor on the BBBT site.

- john russell, chief-scientist and co-founder

Posted by expressor software at 10:30 AM | Comments (0)

April 9, 2009

tdwi report on operational di (co-sponsored by expressor)

We here at expressor are very excited about the emerging opportunities in operational data integration. Philip Russom's excellent report on operational DI, which was just published last week, is a must read for anyone following this space.

We encourage you to download this report from our site.

Michael Waclawiczek, VP Marketing

Posted by expressor software at 10:30 AM | Comments (0)

April 2, 2009

the amalgamation proclamation

So admittedly expressor is the new kid on the data integration block. Surely, our parallel DI technology has been in the works for several years but that is pretty new by most companies' standards.

We too utilize a variety of architectures in our data integration system. We use Microsoft Visio as the foundation for our design tool. Microsoft Excel is utilized for our data architect workbench. We also use a J2EE stack as our backend to tie the whole system together via our semantic metadata repository. Mind you these are all standard enterprise technologies with familiar interfaces and functionality.

But have you seen what is out there in terms of data integration vendor software today? You can choose from a cobbled up system grown via acquisitions whose parts don't even work together, at all. Or my favorite and newest entry, a GUI tool that lets one write custom java code to do all the work. No wonder why data integration developers cost remain between $50 and $300 per hour. You need highly skilled technical resources to develop and maintain these systems.

Let us not also forget the large infrastructure vendors with their end to end solutions. Seems like every RDBMS vendor these days has an integration system. Some even work with competitor technology. Most are even free.

Sounds great!

But how does that help one with real-time or legacy data integration?

That's right, it does not.

What is the real goal of this 'free' software. Come on, we know!

I was talking to a prospective customer a few weeks ago about a new architecture they feel they need to move forward with. They are right by the way - their view is that the traditional way of developing ETL/DI applications is dead - too costly, too complex, too repetitive, and more. After months of tentative discussions and evaluations with six huge data integration players, this prospective customer called us, a small startup in Burlington, MA.

Why? Because there is a growing desire by companies to find new and better ways to approach complex data integration challenges.

- john russell, chief scientist and co-founder

Posted by expressor software at 10:15 AM | Comments (0)