Solutions for Software Architects

If your responsibilities include the planning and design of software systems, ask yourself:

  • Do business drivers in your organization increasingly demand integration across disparate platforms and data sources?
  • Has the integration of legacy data and applications with distributed systems become an imperative for your team?
  • Do you have applications or data that use proprietary APIs, making it difficult to take advantage of them from reporting, analysis, integration, and development tools?
  • Are you faced with requests from end users, customers, or business partners for XML-based web services that access data and/or applications from many disparate sources?
  • Do you need to design flexible and integrated systems that can rapidly adapt to changing requirements?
  • Is uptime and performance important for your applications? How about time-to-market?

Plan for Data Connectivity, Mainframe Integration, and XML Support from the Beginning

In the planning phase of software system design, data connectivity, mainframe integration, and XML support design factors are frequently overlooked. They shouldn't be. The consequences of doing so can cost you, and in several areas:

  • Runtime issues: Performance, scalability, and reliability can all be seriously impacted by your choice of solutions regarding these design factors. For example, advancements in computing power and database design have moved the performance and scalability bottleneck to the data connectivity layer, where up to 95 percent of the processing time consumed by a well-designed application now takes place.
  • Development issues: The solutions you choose now for data connectivity, mainframe integration, and XML support can have far-reaching ramifications for costs associated with development initiatives down the road. Mainframe integration that requires redevelopment of legacy code, for instance, can involve considerable effort on the part of high-priced programmers and runs the risk of downtime in mission-critical systems. XML projects, too, can be extremely code-intensive. All of this can put new applications seriously behind schedule or over budget.
  • Deployment issues: Enormous distinctions exist in the time and effort it takes to deploy available solutions for data connectivity, mainframe integration, and XML support - distinctions that can make a real difference in the time demanded of your organization's staff resources. Data connectivity solutions, in particular, typically introduce a convoluted environment characterized by multiple combinations of provider and native database client software and versions, imposing considerable overhead devoted to deployment, configuration, and ongoing maintenance efforts.

How Can DataDirect Help You?

The world's leader in data connectivity, mainframe integration, and XML query technology, DataDirect offers a multitude of options for integrating your organization's data and systems. We can help you with:

  • Data Connectivity - Implement application connectivity to diverse databases with the DataDirect Connect line of database drivers. Our Connect products consistently support all the currently used releases of a particular database including the latest, as well as the most advanced database features. These providers use the same wire protocol used by native database clients. This innovation not only delivers faster and more reliable performance, it also eliminates the need for clients altogether - dramatically reducing deployment efforts and the versioning issues inherent to so many data-driven applications.

    In addition, with our OpenAccess SDK product, your development team can quickly create custom ODBC, JDBC, ADO.NET, and OLE DB drivers for specialized data stores, making those applications and data accessible to hundreds of reporting, analysis, integration, and development tools.
  • Mainframe Integration - Integrate your organization's invaluable mainframe data and application resources into your software systems using our Shadow family of products. With Shadow, your mainframe assets are transformed into a standards-based interface that your non-mainframe programmers are accustomed to using. Your development teams can use modern development technologies such as SOAP / web services, SQL, or stored procedure calls to access mainframe assets.
  • XML Data Integration - Design SOAP and web services architectures using XML, which is supported across the DataDirect product lines and is what our powerful XQuery engine is all about. XML may have come into your environment by way of regulatory demands, business partner practices, or reporting requirements that have now become integration issues. Whatever the case, DataDirect can help.

Why Use DataDirect?

DataDirect products are built on open standards. This emphasis on interoperability ensures that DataDirect will adopt no proprietary extensions that can slow down software architectural projects. All DataDirect middleware components undergo rigorous testing using our proprietary in-house testing suites as well as externally-developed suites.

Want to learn more about what DataDirect offers for software architects? Visit the following relevant pages on our website:

Data Connectivity

  • DataDirect Connect for JDBC - Get Type 4 JDBC connectivity to SQL Server, DB2, Oracle, and more with the SPECjAppServer/ECPerf performance and scalability leader. Our common architecture across all drivers enables database-independent application development, reducing development effort and allowing developers to complete projects far more quickly.
  • DataDirect Connect for ODBC - Whether you need ODBC connectivity for Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, Sybase, Informix, Linux, Windows, UNIX, or any other database/platform combination, DataDirect Connect for ODBC delivers it. Gain the improved performance and simplified installment and administration of our unique wire protocol design that entirely eliminates the need for database client software and libraries.
  • DataDirect Connect for ADO.NET - Incorporate into your applications .NET connectivity to SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, or Sybase with the industry's only ADO.NET data provider having a 100% managed code architecture that eliminates the need for database clients, boosts performance, and delivers a flexible, secure connection.
  • DataDirect OpenAccess SDK - A custom development kit that allows you to quickly build ODBC, JDBC, ADO.NET and OLE DB drivers for specialized data stores. Data previously unavailable because of proprietary APIs or file formats instantly become accessible to hundreds of reporting, analysis, integration, and development tools. The data source can be anything such as files, relational stores, object stores, business objects, memory, applications, or Web services.

XML Data Integration

Mainframe Integration

  • DataDirect Shadow - Implement non-invasive, simple, reliable, scalable, and secure enterprise-class integration between .NET or J2EE applications and z/OS mainframe environments using the recognized leader in mainframe integration technology. Shadow's single mainframe architecture acts as a mainframe services bus, providing comprehensive support for web services, real-time events, direct SQL data access, and web enablement, allowing for seamless integration with Service-Oriented Architectures and event-driven architectures.

To learn more about the technical benefits you should look for in database connectivity components, as well as the financial and business implications of your choice, read Database Connectivity for Critical Business Systems: An Application Architect's Guide.

To learn more about your data connectivity options, read Database Connectivity: Vendor Selection Criteria: An Application Architect's Guide. Use this as a guide to ensure that the database connectivity options selected at design time meet the requirements of your production systems.

Ready to try our products? Visit the download page for a free 15-day trial (not applicable to Shadow products).

To speak with an expert about our products and licensing options call 1-800-876-3101 or submit a Request for Information form and an account executive will contact you.