Credit Crunch, Security Compliance or Service Oriented Architecture

With a Data Services Platform you have: 

1. The ability to create reports on every data source in a consistent format.
2. The ability to extract data without having to learn each application that created the data source. This alone greatly reduces customisation and consultancy costs.
3. The ability to combine information extracted from a variety of data sources without having to have further programming and re-engineering done.
4. The ability to use a single interface to input all data
5. The ability to have a uniformity of view (ie you don’t have to use the Oracle report view and then for example adjust to a web-based report view for a web-based database or a legacy input screen for an old Dbase III system).
6. The ability to work with future implementations of applications and databases

Another problem that occurs is when changes and upgrades are made to the database.  Many of these changes can affect the reports that we receive on the data and cost further consultancy to correct.

By using a Data Services approach, you are actually decoupling your applications and reports from your data sources so that your reports can remain unaffected no matter how much the database application or data source format changes. As a result ‘correction consultancy’ is no longer needed when upgrades are made.

Credit Crunch and Security Compliance

So what has the credit crunch and security compliance have to do with SOA and Data Services?  Well actually everything. Since Sarbanes Oxley, the 9/11 terrorist attack, the Dot Com Boom and Bust and the current Credit Crunch crisis (caused by a variety of malpractices), corporations are under more and more pressure to prove financial and security compliance and allow greater scrutiny from governments.

This pressure is likely to get worse as more regulation comes in to prevent and to locate answers to either a corporations financial state or vulnerability to attack. Reports and access to data from disparate data sources are required and sometimes within impossible development timescales and budgetary restraints.