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Data Integration: What it is and what it used to be?
Data integration involves combining multiple sources of data to present amalgamated results. The term data integration used to refer to a categorical set of processes for data warehousing called “extract, transform, load,” or ETL. ETL generally consisted of three phases:
- Extracting data from multiple sources and moving it to a staging area.
- Applying a series of transformations, including data standardization and cleansing (where data values are mapped to corresponding standard formats) – followed by reorganizing the data into a format congruous for loading into a target data warehouse.
- Loading the transformed data into an analytical data warehouse environment.
For many data warehousing professionals, the phrase data integration is synonymous with ETL. Over time, though, the techniques and practices utilized for moving data from pristine sources into a data warehouse have been applied to many other data management scenarios. Today, the concept of data integration is much broader in scope. And, frankly, it’s more robust than its constrained use for data warehouse populations.
An Evolution of Data Integration
One of the first innovative twists was to reconsider the traditional order of operations. In lieu of extracting, transforming, and loading, some environments opted to extract the data, load it into the target environment, and then apply the transformations. This approach, dubbed “ELT” (extract, load, transform), not only abstracts the desideratum for an intermediate staging platform – it withal enables more consistent transformations when all of the sourced data sets are available for review at the same time within the data warehouse context. In integration, the ELT approach accommodates the inclusion and transformation of data from authentic-time data sources along with conventionally engendered data extracts.
Yet the volumes of both structured and unstructured data perpetuate to explode as the number of authentic-time data streams grows. In turn, the practices of data integration have expanded to incorporate a richer, more dynamic set of capabilities that support both data warehousing and analytical needs as well as growing numbers of data applications for operational processes. These processes are increasingly data-driven (such as just-in-time manufacturing, genuine-time indemnification claims processing, and Internet of Things applications).
Modern Data Integration
In contrast to the traditional approach of ETL, data integration today encompasses holistic approaches to data accessibility, availability, and movement – that is, the way data is peregrinated from one location to another. A modern data integration practice embraces additional processes for understanding how source data objects are introduced into the environment, how they move across the organization, how information is utilized by different consumers, what types of transformations are applied along the way, and how to ascertain interpretation consistency across different business functions. Data integration products enable you to customize data system solutions that channel the flow of data from engenderers to consumers.
Aside from the traditional methods for standardization, cleansing, and transformation, today’s data integration often includes many other capabilities, like those described next.
Data Flowing Modeling
These techniques and implements are acclimated to document data lineage. That includes how data objects peregrinate from their origination points across all the physical contact points for reading and updates and the ways those data objects are distributed to downstream consumers. Many data integration products provide data flow modeling capabilities that exhibit data lineage and even provide probing and impact analysis cognate to categorical data elements and values.
Data Quality Control
These techniques and implements are acclimated to document data lineage. That includes how data objects peregrinate from their origination points across all the physical contact points for reading and updates and the ways those data objects are distributed to downstream consumers. Many data integration products provide data flow modeling capabilities that exhibit data lineage and even provide probing and impact analysis cognate to categorical data elements and values.

Data Virtualization and Data Federation
The growing interest in data accessibility has led application designers to rethink their approaches to data availability, especially as rampant data facsimileing engenders numerous data replicas of varying consistency and timeliness. A captivating alternative is to leave the data objects in their pristine locations and use data virtualization techniques to engender a semantic representative model layered on top of federated data access accommodations that access data in their pristine locations. These capabilities abbreviate data replication while incrementing data reuse.
Change Data capture
Even in cases where data extracts have been provided, it’s possible to minimize the amplitude of data required to maintain consistency by utilizing change data capture (CDC). CDC is a data integration method that monitors changes to the source data systems and propagates changes along to any replicated databases.
Data Protection
Data protection methods, such as encryption at rest, encryption in motion, and data masking, simply visually examine policies for averting nonessential exposure of personally identifiable information (PII). Because these designates of bulwark are applied as data objects peregrinate from one point to another, they are increasingly part of a data integration toolset.
Data Streaming and Integrated Business Rules
The dramatic ascend in analytics is influencing all data integrators to ingest and process streaming data. Streaming data integration differs from conventional data integration in that “chunks” of the data streams are processed in time windows. There are certainly some circumscriptions on the competency to apply sets of transformations to the entire data set at one time. But integrated business rules can be applied to the data objects in authentic time to achieve some – if not all – of the indispensable transformations prior to downstream data consumption.
Data Catalogs Data Services
As more organizations ingest more immensely colossal volumes of both structured and unstructured data, there is growing interest in moving acquired data into a data lake that’s built utilizing an underlying object store (which has custom metadata). To accommodate different consumer communities, organizations are utilizing data catalogs to inventory the available data sets and register developed data accommodations that can be habituated to access those managed data assets.
Today’s Data Integration: knows your option
When considering options for data integration implements and technologies, today’s hybrid data processing environments are much more involute than those from the good old days. Conventional servers are being linked to immensely colossal data analytics platforms, and we increasingly visually perceive data situated both on-site and in the cloud. There’s withal reliance on a growing number of “as-a-service” offerings to manage a wide range of corporate data assets.
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