DSXchange

Hello All,

Can someone please give me some information on the Information Analyzer, for DataStage 8.0. It would be very helpful, if I can get some help links of some pdf's.
Currently am working with DataStage 7.5.1. But in an upcoming project, which is on DataStage 8.0, I needed to know about the Information Analyzer.

Information Analyzer is a data profiling tool. It is not correct to think of it as "for DataStage" - each is an independent product in the Information Server suite, in the same way that ProfileStage and AuditStage are separate products from DataStage in version 7.

The IBM training class Information Analysis (DX751) will give you the skills you require to use the tool.

I would steer clear of Information Analyzer 8.0 - it was the first release of the profiling product with the new interface and had bugs. Much better going straight to version 8.5. Safer and faster to use. Version 8 only has profiling capabilities, version 8.5 also has data quality monitoring and audit functions. 8.5 also has better integration with Business Glossary for displaying reference lists and profiling results from a Glossary entry.

I would steer clear of Information Analyzer altogether and instead use the Discovery product:

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/inf ... discovery/

I have been through the IA training, got IA certified and after a lot of effort to try to get IA to work, my opinion is Discovery is a much better product for data profiling. You might have to twist your salesperson's arm to get them to sell it to you, as IBM (in my experience) seems very reluctant to promote or sell this software because they know it will kill their IA sales to anyone who does a side-by-side comparison. Kind of like Netezza will kill all DB2 Smart Analytics sales, but that's for another discussion.

Have you used the "data rules" profiling capability (ex AuditStage) in IA? Discovery doesn't have - and is never likely to have - these, though a tool that could discover data rules would be really magic.

I think from the latest IBM material I have seen Information Analyzer is being positioned a lot more in the Data Quality and Monitoring space, rather than in traditional Data Profiling.

I think cppwiz is right in his opinion that Discovery is much stronger in the areas of profiling and understanding of data. However the integration with the Information Server suite is still a work in practice.

ray.wurlod wrote:Have you used the "data rules" profiling capability (ex AuditStage) in IA? Discovery doesn't have - and is never likely to have - these, though a tool that could discover data rules would be really m ...

The business rule validation is quite good, especially when you have access to the SME..