Don Xml's Grok This

	Ab Initio Software and .Net Framework? One of my clients is spent a ton of money on Ab Initio Software Platform for a project separate and distinct from the .Net projects I’m working on, but one of the upper management team now wants to “add Ab Initio” to our project.  The problem is that no one here can really tell me anything substantial about this platform, their corporate site says even less, and except for a small discussion group, there doesn’t seem to be much on the net (besides a bunch of job reqs looking for experience with it).   From what I can tell, it seems like a very closed platform that runs on top of a lot of different OSes, and is used for data wharehousing and ETL.  Since my project is almost 100% .Net (there is some SAS reporting) with Oracle as the backend, I really can’t see any use for this product.  But, if Ab Initio could attach to the project thru web services, then maybe it could be used, but I’m not even sure Ab Initio can do that.  Anyone have some experience using Ab Initio with either .Net or web services?  I’d like to get all the info I can about this product before I sucked into a management meeting, and have to talk intelligently about why the project should/shouldn’t use Ab Initio.  Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it! Published Tuesday, March 30, 2004 1:12 PM by donxml Filed under: .Net Comment Notification If you would like to receive an email when updates are made to this post, please register here Subscribe to this post's comments using RSS Comments Patrick Logan said: Ab Initio is an Extract, Transform, and Load (ET&L) product. Their claim to fame I guess is fast, parallel processing of a data pipeline. Sounds like the upper management representative does not have a technical background, but they want to amortize the cost of the product. The typical fit with web services: Build operational systems (lower in volume, greater in rate of change) with a web services or messaging platform. Build analytical systems (greater in volume, lower in rate of change) with an ET&L, batch platform. An operational data store (ODS) may take frequent changes from systems via web services, keep a small window of history (enough to do "operations", e.g. one day, one week, one month as per the business). The ODS then might also feed that expunged history into a file or interface to the ET&L process for long-term storage in a star scheme for data analysis. (e.g. three years history) March 30, 2004 3:16 PM Brian Vaske said: Don - We have implemented Ab Initio for high performance execution of SAS models that decreased execution time linearly with the size of the machine. This was done for a large credit card company to model their prospects with existing SAS routines that were taking too long to process conventionally against their full production prospect base (171 million individuals with approx. 2 Billion records of attributes). If this is something you are interested in hearing about please feel free to email me (bvaske@itidata.com) or call me at 800.250.5009. Good luck, Brian Vaske Incandescent Technologies, Inc. Are you ready to shed the light on your data? May 13, 2004 6:46 AM Sceptic said: Great comments - first one consists of 90% buzz words 10% sense. Second is a pitch by a sales rep. Donxml - you're right to be sceptical about this - I tried to research Ab Initio - and here are several facts: 1. CEO is a Mss/Mrs Handler who ran Thinking Machines for a while (untill it declared banckruptcy because of non delivered promisses and no market appeal. (source: wickipedia) 2. They list no names of their clients - they are THE ONLY company I know that does not like to advertize - or they are simply liying. 3. Being a technical personal myself I can say they - overhype, don't explain, and create veil of secrecy - sounds like a bad product by a shaidy company March 23, 2007 10:07 AM

About donxml

I’m an independent consultant, specializing in .Net solutions architecture, based out of New Jersey who also doubles as an evangelist for XML, Domain Driven Design, enterprise architecture and .Net. I do not work for Microsoft, the W3C or any other big company that you may know of (at least not yet). I’ve been an indie for over ten years, and although I’ve been tempted a couple times to take a job with companies like Microsoft, I’ve haven’t found something better than my current situation. I work mostly with the large pharmaceuticals that are based here in New Jersey, and usually find myself on long term contracts. Definitely not the prototypical indie consultant, but it lets me dedicate time to my non-income generating activities like the developer community stuff, plus financing open source projects like XPathmania and MVP-XML. If you would like to talk to me about doing some contract work, just contact me via the contact page. My rates vary widely, depending on lots of different variables, but mostly distance from Jersey, and type of work. Plus, I’ve been known to donate some of my code for various projects.