Another Impedence Mismatch to Bridge
I've been studying the SQL BI tools for the past couple months primarily because I had never done a whole lot with OLAP when I was a developer, but also because I want to obtain my TS certification in BI. Anyways, as I've been studying the tools and thinking quite a bit about BI in general, I kept having one reocurring thought - the process for loading the warehouse from disparate systems across the enterprise using a standard ETL methodlogy seems really antithetical to the tenants of SOA. More specifically, while SOA emphasizes encapsulation and strong context boundaries (at the service interface), ETL typically yields a multitude of point to point integrations - many times database to database integrations. Essentially, I had resolved myself to accepting the different approaches simply as a necessary evil for enterprise system architectures - until I read this article by Arnon Rotem-Gal-Oz. You should definitely check it out, but at a high level, Arnond describes a solution pattern where systems in the enterprise push data into the ether, and BI processes then perform scrubbing and loading of that data from a central point, without the invasive techniques typical of ETL processes. One of the techniques that he calls out which was most interesting to me is the use of RSS as the enabling technology for pushing data. Anyways, if I paraphrase any more, I'll do the article an injustice. Check it out.
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About hdierking
I am currently the Editor-in-Chief for MSDN Magazine. I joined Microsoft in 2006 as a product planner with the certification team at Microsoft Learning. Prior to that, I spent my career as a developer and later as an architect. My main technology passions include pretty much anything on language theory, agile development, and service-oriented architecture.