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Information Server
An information server is an integrated software platform consisting of a set of core functional modules that enables organizations to integrate data from disparate sources and deliver trusted and complete information, at the time it is required and in the format it is needed. Similar to how an application server is a software engine that delivers applications to client computers, an information server delivers consistent information to consuming applications, business processes and portals. Architecture overview An information server application can be considered in three logical tiers: a platform foundation, a layer of information oriented services, and a series of optional moduleViewed in this construct, an information server looks like this: Optional components :*Understand – data profiling and metadata creation to understand the content, quality, and structure of information as it resides in source systems :*Cleanse – data quality procedures to eliminate duplicate informat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Software Platform
A computing platform or digital platform is an environment in which a piece of software is executed. It may be the hardware or the operating system (OS), even a web browser and associated application programming interfaces, or other underlying software, as long as the program code is executed with it. Computing platforms have different abstraction levels, including a computer architecture, an OS, or runtime libraries. A computing platform is the stage on which computer programs can run. A platform can be seen both as a constraint on the software development process, in that different platforms provide different functionality and restrictions; and as an assistant to the development process, in that they provide low-level functionality ready-made. For example, an OS may be a platform that abstracts the underlying differences in hardware and provides a generic command for saving files or accessing the network. Components Platforms may also include: * Hardware alone, in the cas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Application Server
An application server is a server that hosts applications or software that delivers a business application through a communication protocol. An application server framework is a service layer model. It includes software components available to a software developer through an application programming interface. An application server may have features such as clustering, fail-over, and load-balancing. The goal is for developers to focus on the business logic. Java application servers Jakarta EE (formerly Java EE or J2EE) defines the core set of API and features of Java application servers. The Jakarta EE infrastructure is partitioned into logical containers. *EJB container: Enterprise Beans are used to manage transactions. According to the Java BluePrints, the business logic of an application resides in Enterprise Beans—a modular server component providing many features, including declarative transaction management, and improving application scalability. * Web container: the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Data Profiling
Data profiling is the process of examining the data available from an existing information source (e.g. a database or a file) and collecting statistics or informative summaries about that data. The purpose of these statistics may be to: # Find out whether existing data can be easily used for other purposes # Improve the ability to search data by tagging it with keywords, descriptions, or assigning it to a category # Assess data quality, including whether the data conforms to particular standards or patterns # Assess the risk involved in integrating data in new applications, including the challenges of joins # Discover metadata of the source database, including value patterns and distributions, key candidates, foreign-key candidates, and functional dependencies # Assess whether known metadata accurately describes the actual values in the source database # Understanding data challenges early in any data intensive project, so that late project surprises are avoided. Finding data ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Extract, Transform, Load
In computing, extract, transform, load (ETL) is a three-phase process where data is extracted, transformed (cleaned, sanitized, scrubbed) and loaded into an output data container. The data can be collated from one or more sources and it can also be outputted to one or more destinations. ETL processing is typically executed using software applications but it can also be done manually by system operators. ETL software typically automates the entire process and can be run manually or on reoccurring schedules either as single jobs or aggregated into a batch of jobs. A properly designed ETL system extracts data from source systems and enforces data type and data validity standards and ensures it conforms structurally to the requirements of the output. Some ETL systems can also deliver data in a presentation-ready format so that application developers can build applications and end users can make decisions. The ETL process became a popular concept in the 1970s and is often used in d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metadata
Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive metadata – the descriptive information about a resource. It is used for discovery and identification. It includes elements such as title, abstract, author, and keywords. * Structural metadata – metadata about containers of data and indicates how compound objects are put together, for example, how pages are ordered to form chapters. It describes the types, versions, relationships, and other characteristics of digital materials. * Administrative metadata – the information to help manage a resource, like resource type, permissions, and when and how it was created. * Reference metadata – the information about the contents and quality of statistical data. * Statistical metadata – also called process data, may describe processes that collect, process, or produce st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Service-oriented Architecture
In software engineering, service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an architectural style that focuses on discrete services instead of a monolithic design. By consequence, it is also applied in the field of software design where services are provided to the other components by application components, through a communication protocol over a network. A service is a discrete unit of functionality that can be accessed remotely and acted upon and updated independently, such as retrieving a credit card statement online. SOA is also intended to be independent of vendors, products and technologies. Service orientation is a way of thinking in terms of services and service-based development and the outcomes of services. A service has four properties according to one of many definitions of SOA: # It logically represents a repeatable business activity with a specified outcome. # It is self-contained. # It is a black box for its consumers, meaning the consumer does not have to be aware of the s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Business Intelligence
Business intelligence (BI) comprises the strategies and technologies used by enterprises for the data analysis and management of business information. Common functions of business intelligence technologies include reporting, online analytical processing, analytics, dashboard development, data mining, process mining, complex event processing, business performance management, benchmarking, text mining, predictive analytics, and prescriptive analytics. BI tools can handle large amounts of structured and sometimes unstructured data to help identify, develop, and otherwise create new strategic business opportunities. They aim to allow for the easy interpretation of these big data. Identifying new opportunities and implementing an effective strategy based on insights can provide businesses with a competitive market advantage and long-term stability, and help them take strategic decisions. Business intelligence can be used by enterprises to support a wide range of business decisi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Master Data Management
Master data management (MDM) is a technology-enabled discipline in which business and information technology work together to ensure the uniformity, accuracy, stewardship, semantic consistency and accountability of the enterprise's official shared master data assets. Drivers for master data management Organisations, or groups of organisations, may establish the need for master data management when they hold more than one copy of data about a business entity. Holding more than one copy of this master data inherently means that there is an inefficiency in maintaining a "single version of the truth" across all copies. Unless people, processes and technology are in place to ensure that the data values are kept aligned across all copies, it is almost inevitable that different versions of information about a business entity will be held. This causes inefficiencies in operational data use, and hinders the ability of organisations to report and analyze. At a basic level, master data ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Business Transformation
In management it has been said that business transformation involves making fundamental changes in how business is conducted in order to help cope with shifts in market environment. However this is a relatively narrow definition that overlooks other reasons and ignores other rationales. A better understanding is achieved by considering that "transformation .is generally a response to two things. First, there are underlying problems or causes of organisational pain that need to be addressed. They have to be properly understood but nevertheless they are a key component. Second, there is a desire by the top management and other senior stakeholders to use the opportunity of addressing these causes in ways that fundamentally alter the paradigm of the organisation." Others describe Business Transformation as "the process of fundamentally changing the systems, processes, people and technology across a whole business or business unit. As such, a business transformation project is likely ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Risk
In simple terms, risk is the possibility of something bad happening. Risk involves uncertainty about the effects/implications of an activity with respect to something that humans value (such as health, well-being, wealth, property or the environment), often focusing on negative, undesirable consequences. Many different definitions have been proposed. The international standard definition of risk for common understanding in different applications is “effect of uncertainty on objectives”. The understanding of risk, the methods of assessment and management, the descriptions of risk and even the definitions of risk differ in different practice areas (business, economics, environment, finance, information technology, health, insurance, safety, security etc). This article provides links to more detailed articles on these areas. The international standard for risk management, ISO 31000, provides principles and generic guidelines on managing risks faced by organizations. Definitions ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Regulatory Compliance
In general, compliance means conforming to a rule, such as a specification, policy, standard or law. Compliance has traditionally been explained by reference to the deterrence theory, according to which punishing a behavior will decrease the violations both by the wrongdoer (specific deterrence) and by others (general deterrence). This view has been supported by economic theory, which has framed punishment in terms of costs and has explained compliance in terms of a cost-benefit equilibrium (Becker 1968). However, psychological research on motivation provides an alternative view: granting rewards (Deci, Koestner and Ryan, 1999) or imposing fines (Gneezy Rustichini 2000) for a certain behavior is a form of extrinsic motivation that weakens intrinsic motivation and ultimately undermines compliance. Regulatory compliance describes the goal that organizations aspire to achieve in their efforts to ensure that they are aware of and take steps to comply with relevant laws, policies, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Data Integration
Data integration involves combining data residing in different sources and providing users with a unified view of them. This process becomes significant in a variety of situations, which include both commercial (such as when two similar companies need to merge their databases) and scientific (combining research results from different bioinformatics repositories, for example) domains. Data integration appears with increasing frequency as the volume (that is, big data) and the need to share existing data explodes. It has become the focus of extensive theoretical work, and numerous open problems remain unsolved. Data integration encourages collaboration between internal as well as external users. The data being integrated must be received from a heterogeneous database system and transformed to a single coherent data store that provides synchronous data across a network of files for clients. A common use of data integration is in data mining when analyzing and extracting informati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
