Recession?? What recession?? At least, that’s what I seem to think when I get to see all the activity that is occurring in the data-warehousing space.

Something that has caught my attention over the past couple of months is the concept of Data Federation. I first came across this concept when I started consulting for a client of mine late last year. There has been a lot of confusion in this space with many people criticizing the concept without giving it much thought. Truth be told, I too was quite skeptical about the need to have a data federation layer when we could achieve the integration of enterprise data using traditional data-warehouses and data-marts.

This belief was reinforced when the data federation tool that was purchased by the organization did not address the organizations needs. [The performance of the solution was found wanting]. Looking at these so called real world facts and without understanding the concept of data federation, I feel that I have been quick to make my judgment on data-federation.

However, over the past couple of months there has been a lot of visibility being offered to this topic and the vendors like Composite Software having learnt from their experiences with various clients have made a conscious effort to educate the data-warehousing community on the use cases for data federation software. This is so critical cause you might have the best solution out there in the market but if the customer does not know how the product is going to benefit him/her, the moolah ain’t coming in.  Also, one other key fact to reiterate is that one size does not fit all. Data Federation definitely will not fit all scenarios. It is the responsibility of the architecture group to evaluate the needs of the project and identify the appropriate solution for the project. When evaluating solutions, being able to have a Proof Of Concept performed by the vendor would also be beneficial for the client.

That being said I would like to reference 2 articles which I believe are quite informative with reference to data federation.

Article 1: http://bit.ly/blElgq

The article linked above illustrates the scenarios wherein data federation can be applied.

For a more in-depth understanding, I would recommend listening to the DM Radio session that the folks @ Information Management had on Data Federation. It was able to address a lot of my questions/concerns with regard to this topic.

Link to the DM Radio Session: http://bit.ly/ccGXsG