Patterns: Information Aggregation and Data Integration with DB2 Information Integrator

Chapter 3. Data Integration and Information Aggregation patterns 93

As another example, consider a large software company with a huge array of

software products. The company develops vast amounts of technical

documentation to support these products. Each product line publishes its own

documentation on its own department Web site. As products change, so does

the technical support documentation. Locating a particular piece of information in

this sea of ever-changing data can be quite challenging and time consuming.

In order to improve efficiency of information access, the company wants to create

a categorized and federated index of all documents that can then be searched or

browsed by users as needed to find the required information. Such an index

must be refreshed on a periodic basis to keep it current. To meet these

requirements, the software company chooses to implement the Population: Multi

Step Process variation.

3.5 Data Integration:: Two-way Synchronization

We describe the basic Two-way Synchronization application pattern and its

variations. The key business and IT drivers for this pattern are described briefly

along with guidelines for their usage.

This Two-way Synchronization application pattern was previously known as the

Replication pattern. It enables a coordinated bidirectional update flow of data in a

multi-copy database environment. It is important to highlight the "two-way"

synchronization aspect of this Application pattern, as it is what distinguishes it

from the "one-way" capabilities provided by the Population application patterns

discussed in 3.4, “Data Integration:: Population” on page 72.

We focus on the two-way case here because it is of more interest in business

intelligence and similar applications where the relationship between replicas is

usually limited to pairs of replicas operating as true master/slaves or where the

distributed read/write function is limited to a small percentage of the shared data.

This section is organized as follows:

򐂰 Business and IT drivers

򐂰 Two-way Synchronization pattern

򐂰 Two-way Synchronization: Multi Step variation pattern

Attention: Two-way Synchronization is a special case of the more general

multi-way synchronization need.

Note: Patterns for multi-way synchronization with more complex relationships

between the replicas are a future need.