Organizations are coping with unprecedented quantities of information, and whereas this knowledge has the potential to assist drive extra knowledgeable enterprise selections and facilitate AI initiatives, knowledge silos can come up and forestall firms from realizing the true potential of their knowledge.
“Integrating numerous knowledge sources requires not solely bridging variations in knowledge fashions and protocols but additionally implementing constant safety controls and with out these, organizations danger exposing delicate data and fragmenting their knowledge panorama,” stated Kumar Vikesh, senior technical product supervisor on the knowledge connectivity firm Progress.
One resolution to this problem is Microsoft Material, a platform that enables knowledge from a number of completely different sources to be unified in a single knowledge lake the place it may be related to completely different analytics and reporting instruments, like Energy BI.
Beneath the hood, these connections are made doable by the Synapse Endpoint, a connection interface for querying knowledge with SQL in OneLake, Material’s unified knowledge lake. “This makes it simple for builders, analysts, and knowledge engineers to work together with structured and semi-structured knowledge while not having to be taught new question languages or change platforms,” stated Vikesh.
To make the Material ecosystem much more accessible, Progress provides a DataDirect Connector that enables organizations to attach functions to the Synapse Endpoint, providing a variety of distinct advantages over Microsoft’s native tooling.
DataDirect is the corporate’s software for connecting up completely different knowledge sources. “It provides high-performance connectors and integration instruments designed for safe, dependable, and scalable entry to knowledge throughout cloud, on-premises, and hybrid environments,” Vikesh stated.
Its advantages over Microsoft’s native tooling embody multi-platform assist (Linux, AIX, and Solaris vs. Home windows solely), enterprise-grade safety, cloud-to-cloud and hybrid connectivity, assist for OData v4, and customized enhancements that enhance usability and supply extra management over uncovered knowledge.
The DataDirect Connectors additionally assist facilitate many various analytics use circumstances. This contains connecting to BI and reporting and ETL instruments to knowledge, permitting these integration functions to ingest, rework, and sync knowledge between Material and different downstream techniques like Snowflake, Redshift, or on-prem databases. The DataDirect Connector additionally permits light-weight net and cell apps to simply connect with Material utilizing SQL with the ODBC or JDBC requirements.
Along with these conventional knowledge analytics use circumstances, additionally it is designed to be AI-ready. In response to Vikesh, the OneLake structure centralizes knowledge in order that AI fashions can entry numerous datasets, and makes it simpler for knowledge scientists to arrange coaching knowledge utilizing acquainted instruments.
“Collectively, Material and DataDirect empower organizations to unlock the total potential of their knowledge for AI, with out compromising on efficiency, safety, or flexibility,” stated Vikesh.
Past the Microsoft Material DataDirect Connector, Progress provides a variety of different merchandise inside the DataDirect umbrella, together with its Hybrid Information Pipeline for connecting SaaS functions to on-premise knowledge, an SDK for creating autonomous REST connectors, a toolkit for constructing drivers that expose proprietary knowledge sources, and ready-to-use ODBC, JDBC, and OData Connectors.
