The Evolution of the Solution

Middleware systems evolved from the need to integrate disparate data from multiple sources for specific applications and less predictable types of analyses – exactly what you need in a manufacturing environment.

Most transaction-oriented systems are designed to optimize the business transactions they support, while systems for analyses of such data are usually not considered critical to system design. This tends to leave valuable information fractured across several datastores. To address the broader requirements across multi-disciplinary areas within the manufacturing environment, two primary approaches have evolved to bring data together: data warehouses and database middleware systems.

Data warehouses evolved from attempts to simply centralize and coordinate all the databases within a corporate environment. Even though data warehouses provide a single point of entry for analyses of selected corporate data and a framework for business analyses, they are not ideal for quickly and easily transforming your manufacturing data into useful, actionable information – what we call Manufacturing Informatics™. Discoverant, including the middleware engine it contains, provides you with the quickest and most effective solutions to your data access and analysis needs. It also provides you with flexible problem-solving options and efficient handling of complex data types. Discoverant’s middleware technology supports flexible analyses focused in specific process areas that cross database boundaries, and it doesn’t require that every piece of your corporate data be stored and controlled in a single location. Discoverant gives you meaningful analysis results long before data warehouse requirements could even be specified.

Discoverant’s use of a database middleware system benefits you in the following ways:

Timeliness of Data

• Easy-to-configure software keeps up with changes in source data by updating metadata instead of program logic.
• Easy integration of additional data sources solves immediate problems while still planning broader solutions to longer-term problems. Discoverant merely requires pointers to new data sources to begin using the data. New data can be brought online quickly for immediate analysis while defining the full extent of user requirements continues.
• Less effort is required to bring additional functionality on-line when existing database designs from the data source are leveraged. As users conduct analyses on the data, they will develop new questions requiring new data elements and related analytical requirements. With a data warehouse, this would create a need to change extract procedures and the warehouse database. With middleware, all that’s required is a pointer to the new elements.

Application Design and Support

• Data access is not tied to any given architecture; middleware translates between the application and the source database so changes in the underlying architecture are invisible to the end-user and can be implemented on the fly.
• Applications designed for specific end-user groups use data most efficiently.
• Effectively maps relationships between discrete, continuous and replicate data types.
• Provides an additional opportunity to assign security privileges in the middleware layer.
• A middleware solution does not require the construction of complicated data refresh processes. This is especially important where continuous process data creates huge extracts resulting in time-consuming loading steps.

Implementation Effort

• User-driven implementation places fewer requirements on IT staff.
• Leverages investments in existing systems, providing additional functionality outside of the original designs.