A new search-analytical database used to unify structured data and unstructured content lies at the core of Endeca Latitude, a new business intelligence product introduced today by Endeca, a search and business intelligence software company.
The database, called the MDEX Engine, deals with the data in its own schema, regardless of its original type, format or source, explained Paul Sonderegger, Endeca’s chief strategist.
“So when unanticipated business needs and questions arise, IT teams can add a data set to a discovery application without complex reworking of the model or design,” he said. This helps relieve the business intelligence backlog of stacked up requests; cuts the application’s initial deployment to weeks instead of months; and helps the business address daily decisions more quickly, he added.
“Traditional approaches to business intelligence is, first you model, then load the model only with data that conforms to the model, and then build reports on top. Only then does the business see what they’re actually going to get,” Sonderegger explained.
But now, if a business wants to unify another data source with existing data in an application, IT teams can pull in the additional data without having to do a big modeling exercise, since the engine digests the data’s schema as is, he added.
Business intelligence applications, otherwise known as discovery applications, are assembled on Endeca’s Discovery Framework, which Sonderegger said provides a library of components that deliver advanced search capabilities of all data sources and sits on top of the MDEX Engine.
Whether located in or outside the business, content and data is brought into the MDEX Engine via integrations with ETL (extract, transform, load) tools (such as Informatica); and text analysis tools, such as Lexalytics, Sonderegger said. Endeca Latitude also includes crawlers for file systems and websites, he added.
Endeca Latitude is an on-premise solution. Pricing depends on the number of users and the amount of data that goes into the business intelligence applications, Sonderegger said.
