June 2018 Summaries

In a recent report from Gigaom Research, Lead Analyst Andrew Brust examines the challenge of fragmented organizational data and its impact on enterprise operations. Enterprises are seeking to harness their data efficiently and innovatively to gain a competitive edge, but technical breakthroughs must be matched by careful integration of data within analytics layers. The fragmentation and distribution of an organization's data, driven by cloud-based SaaS offerings and the proliferation of NoSQL databases and Big Data systems, has made integration work more difficult. However, Brust argues that a unified approach to connecting to, integrating, and querying data is necessary, and proposes that application programming interfaces (APIs) can play a key role in achieving this goal. By exploring the history of conventional APIs, their combination with the database metaphor, and their potential for scaling across multiple data sources, Brust aims to provide insights into the path forward for data-driven organizations and digital transformation.

The 2018 Driver update includes enhancements to the Driver engine, support for new data sources, and significant upgrades to API Server and Sync products. The ADO.NET Data Providers have been updated with .NET Standard 2.0 assemblies supporting .NET Core, Mono, and Xamarin, discontinuing the Xamarin Editions but adding mobile development support out of the box. CData Sync 2018 features a consolidated web-based configuration interface, new source and database destinations, extended data transformation capabilities, and an all-new management API. The SQL to NoSQL Mapping Enhancements include relational modeling capabilities for hierarchical data and JSON data access with parent-child relationships into related tables. Additional updates include federated authentication capabilities, improved bulk update performance, and new releases and beta drivers. Users can download a free 30-day trial of any Driver to see the ease of connecting to live data.