Update to IBM Information Server Boosts Data Management Efficiency

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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.

What’s New in IBM IIS Version 11.7

As the president of TVMG Consulting, Timothy Valihora draws on more than 24 years of experience in technical architecture, software development, and data governance and warehousing to serve clients across a broad range of industries. His particular area of specialization is the IBM InfoSphere Information Server. Over the course of his career, Timothy Valihora has performed more than 100 successful installs of IBM IIS and has developed considerable expertise in all aspects of this leading data integration platform.

IB recently released the latest design of the platform, IBM IIS Version 11.7. Some of the new features in this release include:

1. Enterprise search – Geared toward business users, this new feature offers an enriched search experience powered by a detailed knowledge graph. This graph helps users gain new awareness and understanding of enterprise data, and how such data is connected and used, through its clear and simple contextual presentation.

2. DataStage Flow Designer – This thin-client interface boosts productivity by simplifying job development and speeding job creation. DataStage Flow Designer also eliminates the need for expensive Citrix infrastructure. The feature is easy to learn through the quick tours on each dashboard.

3. Automation powered by machine learning – IBM IIS Version 11.7 deploys machine learning that continuously improves as it is used, which greatly accelerates the speed of metadata classification.

IBM’s Information Governance Catalog

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With over two decades of active experience as a technical architect, Timothy Valihora provides a broad range of skills in the information technology space. One of Timothy Valihora’s areas of expertise is in the utilization of the IBM Information Governance Catalog (IGC). IGC was introduced at IBM InfoSphere Information Server (IIS) v11.1 and is essentially a re-worked offering of “Business Glossary” and the former “MetaData Workbench” products.

IGC offers organizations a means of managing and comprehending their information. It enables companies of any size to store and manage their valuable data assets in a centralized system created for the purpose.

The key components of IGC include Business Glossary (used to define a corporate ‘vocabulary’ of categories, terms, policies and rules) and Information Assets (technical objects generally loaded via IBM MetaData Asset Manager – or IMAM) which can then be mapped to terms within Business Glossary.

Tim Valihora has extensive experience in assisting companies to utilize IGC to i) define their business and technical metadata in the glossary, ii) establish data governance policies which can be achieved through establishing and enforcing rules, iii) establishing responsibility (ownership) of information assets through stewardship – and iv) linking business metadata to technical metadata.

In addition Mr. Valihora is an expert at “Open IGC” which involves creation of a custom asset bundle within IGC (these assets are generally objects that a company would like to define but are not able to come into the governance catalog via one of the available connectors within IMAM.)

Open IGC relies upon calling the IGC Rest API for both querying and creating new custom content. Ideally DataStage jobs are used for this purpose and Tim Valihora has extensive experience writing such programs which utilize the Hierarchical Data stage – that includes REST functionality which is idea for both JSON and XLM calls to the REST API.

Using the Glossary Development component – governance policies, rules, categories, terms, labels, and the inclusive data hierarchy setup are established and can be manually customized via custom attributes. In addition, the import wizard of the Information Governance Catalog allows for the uncomplicated import of existing categories, labels, governance, and rules.

Those who have access to the catalog are users who have designated security and workflow roles. Access based on specified roles guarantees that only authorized users can access, create, and manipulate data assets assigned to them.