RODIN Data Asset Management

Many software suites have multiple products, each with confusing names and are often separately developed products that have been acquired and stitched together.

Of course, any comprehensive software suite has multiple components or modules, as does RODIN.  But RODIN is a single, comprehensive software suite, with just one name, that has been developed to be easy to use, yet provide powerful functionality and significantly simplify the development and maintenance of data warehouses, data mart and other data integration applications.

RODIN has many functional areas, all of which are tightly integrated by the Active Metadata layer, so let’s discuss that first.

Active Metadata.

Metadata comes in many forms.

All of these types of metadata form the heart of RODIN. The warehouse tables and indexes, the ETL processes, and all associated functions are generated and built by RODIN’s Active Metadata. This plays a vital role in ensuring integrity across the entire environment. A change in one place is usually automatically reflected in other related or dependant places.  Or if that’s not possible, impact analysis reports are generated, providing a roadmap for the developer so that he or she knows exactly what needs to be done to complete the change.

Data Management.

Data Acquisition.

Functionality associated with the data sources, from which you load the data warehouse or data mart tables.
This is by far the most challenging area of any data warehouse project. The source data comes in all shapes and sizes: from nicely structured easy to access local tables to complex data legacy structures on remote systems. You don’t get to choose!

RODIN can automatically acquire technical metadata describing many different data sources, ranging from System i tables (both local and remote) to Oracle, SQL Server and other non-IBM databases, as well as ASCII text and delimited files. In addition, RODIN’s integration with IBM middleware products provides for access to just about any legacy data source too.

Identifying and describing the data sources is the easy part.  The difficulty is usually in the data itself. The source data needs to be selected, extracted, validated, transformed and loaded into the target tables – commonly referred to as the Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) process.

The state-of-the-art visual development client dramatically reduces the development effort. Write business rules using a simple to learn interface. Draw lines to create joins and source to target mappings.  

RODIN’s real-time Change Data Capture allows you to collect source table data based on journal images, vastly simplifying the effort in identifying new, or changed information

Data quality is one of the key success factors in any business intelligence implementation. RODIN automatically applies a whole range of validation criteria; such as ensuring joins are successful or validating dates. In addition you can define virtually any desired data quality rules. RODIN will take care of the rest. Data errors are automatically captured, staged and reported at the end of the ETL process – ready for you to action. You will know exactly what the problem is with every rejected record!

Knowing what happened during any ETL process is also a key requirement – especially today, with so much focus on Compliance. RODIN automatically generates audit metadata, reporting on many important metrics associated with the ETL process.

Change Management and Versioning

Keeping track of changes to the structure/design of the data warehouse and ETL processes is a key requirement. RODIN provides comprehensive built-in change management and version control. You can quickly and easily see the change history for any object, or compare versions etc. Again, RODIN’s active metadata repository is responsible for this support.

Total Environment Control

You can create multiple RODIN environments. Each has it’s own metadata repository and data library. Environments can be created for Development, System Test and Production use – or any other specific use. Definitions can easily be moved from one environment to another, even if on different systems or LPARs. Security setup can be different for each environment, ensuring only authorized users have access to both the software and sensitive data.

Product Packaging

Various RODIN Editions are available, designed to meet the needs of a wide range of organizations, from large multi-nationals, to smaller companies with less complex requirements:

RODIN Enterprise Edition

This edition allows unlimited use of RODIN. No per-user licenses required. No limit on the number of environments, or number of tables in the data repository. Suitable for Enterprise-wide implementations, usually by larger organizations with extensive requirements.

Licensing options are by CPU, or CPW range.

RODIN Gold/Silver/Bronze Editions

New!  RODIN DB2 Web Query Edition

RODIN DB2 Web Query Edition features extensive metadata integration that automatically exports your RODIN data set table information and descriptive metadata to DB2Web Query, ensuring that your query authors have all the information they need to use your data warehouse correctly.