SmartDB Upgrades Oracle Migration Tool

SmartDB Workbench includes features that enable customers to convert and clean up data as part of an application upgrade or migration project, define data interfaces between enterprise applications, and consolidate enterprise data.

Changes in the new version are focused in three areas, according to company spokespersons: improved reporting, additions to the products library of prebuilt adapters for transforming data and a new graphical interface for customizing adapters, and improved performance of the runtime transformation engine.

"The driving force behind this upgrade is Oracle's rearchitecting the way you get access to underlying databases," said Scott Conway, Vice President of Marketing for SmartDB, in an interview. "Previously, you had an open interface and direct access to the database. But the latest version of Oracle, 11.5.10, adds a database API loader." The API loader makes it easier to address security issues in data-transfer operations, but, he said, it makes it harder to control the quality of the data.

Reporting becomes very important in this environment, as a way of capturing errors and assuring data quality. "There's been a significant improvement in the log files generated by SmartDB Workbench 10.0," he said. SmartDB's extended logging improves the readability and interpretation of the log file that is generated with every execution of a SmartDB adapter. Data fields that cause errors are more easily identified, error messages are more descriptive, summary statistics are more meaningful, and the overall layout of the log file has been simplified, according to the company's release announcement.

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The SmartDB Workbench Intelligent Adapters automate what traditionally have been manual programming tasks in data migration projects. The adapters map the field information for Oracle modules and master data entries. Workbench 10.0 makes customizing the adapters easier. It provides a new rules editor with a graphical point-and-click interface that makes it much easier for a user to build syntactically correct rules for transforming and validating data, said Conway.

Effort has also gone into improving the performance of the SmartDB runtime, to improve scalability and the efficiency of the logging process -- work that has yielded a 15 percent improvement in throughput, according to Conway.

Typically the use of SmartDB Workbench begins at the earliest stages of a project, when projects are still no more than "conference room pilots," according to Gavin Harvett, Vice-President of Product Marketing for SmartDB. As early as the functional testing stage, he said, "SmartDB Workbench is involved to create pilot data. As the project progresses the new data structure and the SmartDB Workbench adapter that builds it are created in tandem."

Harvett foresees continuing consolidation in the enterprise software marketplace, which means growing demand for his company's data migration tools: "Companies will be re-evaluating their application infrastructure and implementing significant changes. SmartDB Workbench 10.0 provides companies and their system integrator partners with an integral tool that can significantly reduce the disruption and risks of the changing application landscape."

SmartDB Corp. also released PS2O this year, a product that supports PeopleSoft-to-Oracle migrations. For more information visit www.smartdbcorp.com.

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