Informatica Boosts Data Warehouse Building

An update to Informatica Corp.s flagship PowerCenter data integration platform promises to give enterprises a more open and adaptive approach to data warehouse building.

PowerCenter 7 will be unveiled this week and is due early next month. It replaces earlier versions of proprietary APIs with standards-based integration technologies to support Web services interoperability. Another key feature is support for grid-computing technologies, which can boost processing power by using available computing resources more efficiently, said Informatica officials, in Redwood City, Calif.

This is the first version of PowerCenter to include mainframe data movement technology that Informatica obtained when it bought Striva Corp. in September. This release includes several new features that company officials classify as data stewardship, including enhancements in data profiling, data quality, version control and configuration management.

PowerCenter 7 will support collaborative application development so that developers can work on the same integration projects regardless of location. That is seen as a key element in an IT world where outsourced development, often to offshore locations, has become commonplace. Informatica added new security features to this release, providing what company officials call a more holistic view of security.

The next generation of PowerCenter, due around the middle of next year, is code-named Project Hercules. It will feature a model-driven architecture that can make adjustments to the extraction, transformation and loading process, including mixing up the traditional ETL process order on the fly with no programming, officials said.