Category Archives: Databases

Update to IBM Information Server Boosts Data Management Efficiency

IBM pic
IBM
Image: 03.ibm.com

The president of TVMG Consulting Inc., Timothy Valihora has over 20 years experience in the information technology industry. A qualified IBM Information Server Expert, Timothy Valihora is trained and certified in several server protocols, including data warehousing and software. His many certifications include one covering IBM’s InfoSphere Information Server v11.7.

The IBM InfoSphere Information Server is a suite of data management programs for data integration and governance. The suite’s core capability is a common metadata repository that allows users to share information across assets. The repository stores various sorts of information, such as reports and imported metadata for all components of the InfoSphere Information Server. When one user shares imported data in the metadata repository, other users gain access to it in the server’s other components. The suite was was last updated in December 2017.

The latest version, IBM Information Server v11.7, includes additional features. For example, the IBM Information Server Enterprise Search allows users to easily find assets and explore their relationships. The latest version also allows for social collaboration. Users can now rate assets and share comments about them. The Information Server Governance Monitor was also added. This component enables users to check the status and health of their data in the Quality Curation Dashboard feature. These and other capabilities of unified governance enable users to easily manage and share data.

A Brief Summary of Data Warehousing

Data Warehousing pic
Data Warehousing
Image: wisegeek.com

Timothy Valihora, president of TVMG Consulting, Inc., is required to manage technical architecture for his job. Timothy Valihora has over 20 years of work experience in this area, with a main focus on data governance, data warehousing and data conversions.

Mr. Valihora is now one of the foremost experts in “Open IGC” which involves creating technical assets within the IBM Information Server Information Governance Catalog (IGC) via “Bundle.zip” technology. Once custom technical assets are created within IGC the REST API is used to create assets and map them to their associated terms. If no ‘metabroker’ or connector exists – within IIS – simply stated – the REST API must be used to create the asset within the governance catalog.

Tim Valihora is an expert in all aspects of IBM IGC, Open IGC and the REST API.

A data warehouse differs from a traditional database in that it is designed for query and analysis, whereas a traditional database is designed for transaction processing. A data warehouse typically contains historical data derived from transaction data, and includes a relational database as well as an extraction, transportation, transformation, and loading (ETL) solution, an online analytical processing engine, and client analysis tools, among other data-managing applications.

Data warehouse projects usually require a cross-functional team of people with either business or IT experience, although often at least one person will fulfil more than one role on this team. Role assignments depend on the size of the project as well as each individual’s availability and experience. The project requires representatives to fill a large number of roles including business sponsor, analytic application developer, technical architect, and data modeller.

Information Analyzer

Timothy Valihora, the president of TVMG Consulting, Inc., has over 17 years’ experience working with a wide range of server tools and operational platforms. His areas of expertise encompass a plethora of data warehousing and data conversion technologies. As an IBM information server expert, Timothy Valihora has done extensive work with the IBM data profiling tool Information Analyzer.

Otherwise known as the WebSphere Information Analyzer or the InfoSphere Information Analyzer, IBM’s Information Analyzer is widely used for data quality assessment and data quality monitoring. It also has a number of data rule design and analysis capabilities. The product specializes in helping users derive more meaning from their complied data through a better understanding of data structure and relationships.

The four main profiling functions of Information Analyzer are column analysis, primary key analysis, foreign key analysis, and cross-domain analysis. These advanced analysis and monitoring modalities are designed to help organizations classify and assess all manner of digital information.

Teradata

An IT professional and management consultant with a career that spans 17 years, Timothy Valihora currently serves as the president of TVMG Consulting, Inc. He specializes in all facets of computer data warehousing and data conversions. In addition to his familiarity with a wide range of IBM data management applications, Timothy Valihora is an established Teradata expert.

A fully scalable relational database system, Teradata is commonly used to manage a number of major data warehousing operations. It is able to execute complex queries with less than 256 joins. Combining symmetric multiprocessing technology with communication networking, the system can facilitate interconnectivity to create large parallel processing networks.

The Teradata database management system is a product of the Teradata Corporation, a Miamisburg, Ohio, computer software company that supports dozens of analytic data platforms, applications, and related services. Components of the Teradata database management system range from Basic Teradata Query and Open Teradata Backup to MultiLoad, FastExport, ODBC, and Tpump.

Timothy Valihora: Data Warehouses Evolving Rapidly

Timothy Valihora is an information technology entrepreneur based in Ottawa, Ontario, and is president of TVMG Consulting Inc. Timothy Valihora is also an IBM Information Server expert with over 17 years of experience in information technology and data warehousing.

Data warehousing has evolved rapidly. Previously, data warehouses were housed at remote facilities with access limited to a few professionals. Today, savvy companies are looking for ways to let more individuals have real-time access to their data warehouses to make better, faster business decisions.

According to Oracle, organizations are deploying data-driven business analytics across multiple departments, including finance, marketing, and customer service. As a result, more enterprises demand that their data warehouse perform faster. Fortunately new technologies, such as dynamic random access memory (DRAM) and flash infrastructures, can decrease processing times and let employees run large-scale queries much more quickly.

Without question, data warehouses have come a long way since they were first conceived in the 1980s. Although once thought of as a tool to create annual and quarterly management summaries, data warehouses are now able to provide up-to-the-minute data access to employees across the enterprise.

Benefits of Implementing Business Intelligence Software

A management consultant at TVMG Consulting, Inc., Timothy Valihora is an experienced database programmer as well as an IBM Information Service Expert. As a database specialist, Timothy Valihora is familiar with the business benefits of using business intelligence software, such as IBM’s Information Analyzer.

Business Intelligence (BI) is a collection of software and applications that analyzes a company’s data and delivers reports that assist in the decision-making process. With roots going back to the 1990s, the first reports focused on historical data. Today, BI can assist companies with forecasting, data management, predictive modeling, analytical processing, and optimization.

One of BI’s most obvious benefits is the ability to use historical data to predict future trends areas such as customer demographics or marketplace environments. Combined with forecasting, predictive modeling can help a company visualize which future options might work best. Storing all the BI data in a central location give a variety of departments access to this information, which is an advantage in large corporations with many different divisions who are tied together by one overarching strategy or vision.

Timothy Valihora – What Is Data Warehousing?

Currently president of Ottawa-based TVMG Consulting Inc., Timothy Valihora is an expert in information technology, with certified training in IBM’s InfoSphere Information Server and Microsoft’s SQL Server. Valihora has worked on various projects for the city of Ottawa, as well as corporate clients such as Merck and Hilton Grand Vacations. His familiarity with the ins and outs of data warehousing has made Timothy Valihora an effective consultant in this area.

In the 21st century, data warehousing plays a critical role in the way businesses are managed. A data warehouse is a collection of information that does not relate to transactions, although transactional histories are often a component.

Data warehousing itself is an organizational process that allows a business to analyze patterns and relationships between bits and pieces of information without all the confusion of day-to-day bookkeeping. As it is subject oriented, integrated, nonvolatile, and focused on change over time, data warehousing is a useful way to explore different correlations and store large amounts of diverse information.

An Overview of SQL

Throughout his career as a management consultant, Timothy Valihora has acquired a wealth of experience in software development, information technology, and data warehousing. Timothy Valihora also possesses significant experience with Structured Query Language (SQL), a popular special-purpose programming language designed to manage data in relational database management systems.

Initially released by Oracle Corporation nearly 35 years ago, SQL helps users request information from databases in a highly efficient manner. In 1986, the American National Standards Institute established SQL as a standard query language. One year later, the International Organization for Standards followed suit. Since then, the two organizations have updated the standards with features and extensions.

For many years, SQL has served as the preferred query language for databases operating on mainframes and minicomputers. In recent years, PC database systems have begun to support SQL on distributed databases, which allow users on a local area network to use the database at the same time.

Timothy Valihora: IBM QualityStage

Timothy Valihora is an IBM Information Server certified consultant fluent in numerous areas of information technology. He graduated from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, where he studied computer science, math, film, and commerce. To serve his clients, Timothy Valihora uses a wide array of software, server tools, and operating systems such as IBM’s InfoSphere platform, which includes QualityStage.

QualityStage is a powerful but accessible tool designed for enterprise users such as companies involved in gathering and examining business intelligence. In particular, QualityStage places users in control of a graphical user interface (GUI) where they can effortlessly implement automated processes. For example, sets of data can be matched according to user-specified rules and analyzed according to a diverse set of metrics.

One of QualityStage’s most powerful features is data cleansing, the ability to pull data from a source, measure it, clean it, consolidate it to eliminate redundancy, and upload it to a target system. Data cleansing occurs over five stages, each providing users with total data visibility. QualityStage also provides address verification, which verifies postal codes and other address information for over 240 countries.