Web services are provided to allow users to access and modify data across different domains and also to import and export hierarchical data across related data catalogs (repositories). Tibco claims that CIM is the first MDM product to provide multi-domain data management capabilities.
CIM is already differentiated around a proven ability to model and maintain multiple data elements, said Neeraj Gokhale, general manager, of enterprise information management at Palo Alto, California-based Tibco.
Our MDM is a platform is comprehensive enough to apply to all types of master data domains. What we’re adding now in 7.0 is a cross-catalog capability that helps to maintain relationships between data domains, for example, which customers are being serviced out of what locations, and which vendors are providing what products.
Additionally, Tibco has also debuted a new embedded distributed caching facility that provides high-performance asynchronous rules, workflow, and import/export data processing for large datasets.
This is exciting for use because as CIM becomes more like a central repository for truth we can now enhance its performance across cached nodes, Gokhale said.
Other new features pushed into version 7.0 include an improved user interface for importing and exporting metadata, a Google-like search capability for data attributes and catalogs, role-based delegation, version comparison tools, and wizard-based installation and configuration.
Tibco’s CIM is an event-driven product that provides an integrated data services layer in an SOA to help companies to synchronize relevant business information with downstream business applications. The software ensures that data used across downstream systems and applications is accurate, consistent, rich enough for the purpose at hand, and current.
Gokhale said that CIM differs from other centralized database, or catalog-centric MDM applications in that it is distributed and workflow-based.
We see MDM as being a distributed process that automates data management from the inception of master data to its distribution and consumption downstream to transactional and data warehousing systems.
Master data is exposed as a web service which can be used to interrogate the MDM data model [when new data comes into the system] or when it is consumed. In that way we’re a good citizen of an SOA infrastructure.
CIM is based on software that Tibco acquired from Velosel in October 2005. The software has been in production since 2001, which explains its mature 7.0 release cycle.
MDM is a strategic part of Tibco’s vision to provide an enabling platform for real-time predictive enterprise which includes a stack of other technologies like data integration, application integration (ESBs), business process management software (Staffware).
But you still need to do is synchronize the semantic integration of data. That’s what our CIM MDM software does,Gokhale said.
Tibco CIM 7.0 is available now and runs on Red Hat Linux ES/AS 3.1 or higher and includes 64-bitsupport, Microsoft Windows Server 2003, AIX 5.2, 5.3, Solaris 9, 10 and HP-UX 11.
Pricing for the new CIM software remains the same.
