InfoSphere Data Architect tasks

You can use InfoSphere® Data Architect to discover, model, relate, and standardize diverse and distributed assets.

Your organization can use InfoSphere Data Architect to complete the following tasks:

Discover the structure of heterogeneous data sources

By understanding the structure of your data sources, you can help your users to understand the detailed properties of each data asset, while increasing efficiency and reducing time to value for your data integration project.

InfoSphere Data Architect discovers the structure of heterogeneous data sources by examining and analyzing the underlying metadata. The tool requires only an established Java™ Database Connectivity (JDBC) connection to the data sources to explore their structures by using local queries.

After discovering the structure of your data, data architects can view peer relationships between databases, schemas, and tables. This topology diagram helps to visualize the connections between source objects and target objects in your enterprise.

Develop data models

By using InfoSphere Data Architect, you can create logical, physical, and domain models for DB2®, Informix®, Oracle, Sybase, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, and Teradata. Elements from logical and physical data models can be represented in diagrams that use Information Engineering (IE) notation. Physical data models can also use Unified Modeling Language (UML) notation.

You can import and use IBM® Industry Models in InfoSphere Data Architect to incorporate data models for your specific industry. By supporting IBM Netezza® data warehouse appliances, you can include transformations from the IBM Industry Models to IBM Netezza physical data models.

Dimensional modeling is also supported to extend logical and physical data models. Dimensional models map the aspects of each process within your business, reducing the time required to develop warehouse and business intelligence systems.

Implement corporate standards

Defining and implementing corporate standards increases data quality and enterprise consistency for naming, meaning, values, relationships, privileges, privacy, and lineage. By using InfoSphere Data Architect, data architects can define standards once and associate them with diverse models and databases.

Data architects can also incorporate terms and definitions from InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog into existing or new data models to align business and IT.