Infobright Blog

Over the last few weeks, I have read about how different organizations are using analytics to solve particular business problems. I have been amazed with the elegance of these solutions and how they might be applied to solve other business issues.  One of my favorite pastimes is to read about how different organizations are utilizing these technologies within their infrastructure and how they make them fit within their workflow and business processes. 

Data analytics is complex and a topic that might often make the traditional OLTP database engineer want to re-schedule their day.  However, when an organization starts to ask questions like "How can we leverage analytics?" or "What can we learn from better data analysis?", the conversations start to become less and less complex and more straightforward.  Data intelligence, which is pure fact, combined with analysis can teach us how to operate even more intelligently.

In one use case by the Canadian Space Agency, I learned that analytics are being used to monitor measurements against strict tolerances, which if missed, could highlight manufacturing flaws in a satellite.  This analytic approach was intuitive and elegant.  Intelligence allows us to overcome the barriers of billions and billions of records and sub-second query response, without having to throw more hardware at a solution.  Elegant and intuitive, this is where analytic approaches to information and software development cross over.

With the need for access to more information, that typically span across increasing large data sets, more and more companies are faced with the challenges of big data.  Delivering fast performance while reducing hardware through very high rates of data compression, and eliminating manual effort is not an easy task, but this is where I have found that the scientific approach Infobright has taken excels. 

In engineering we often train other people how to think when it comes to software development.  We tend to teach users our development process and oftentimes we will shape the end user’s mindset about the approach to an application. There is a tendency to focus more on the technical aspects of the system and information flow, rather than the analysis of the data itself.  I know that I have said at least one or twice before, "That box can hold any information you want it to". However, with data analytics and the kinds of solutions that Infobright offers, I can ask "What kind of information can I provide that will make you better at your job?"

 To read about the Canadian Space Agency and other use cases, click here http://www.infobright.com/Customer/canadian_space_agency/

Fresh off the heels of Talend’s latest major release (v5), I noticed a surge in activity on our user forums regarding the installation of Talend using Infobright.  To consolidate our recent lessons learned, I wanted to describe the most efficient method for connecting Talend to Infobright.  If you have any questions, please feel free to post to our user forum; we’ll be happy to tackle any issue you raise.

These instructions assume that you have Infobright installed and running.  

1. First and foremost, download Talend.  In this example, we will download Talend Open Source Data Integrator v5.0. (http://www.talend.com/download.php) 
2. Once fully installed, download the Talend/Infobright Connector.  Ensure you download the right connector; instructions are on the download page (http://www.infobright.org/Downloads/Contributed-Software/)
   • If you download Talend 4.0+, you’ll want the latest connector
   • For older versions of Talend, you’ll want the 3.7 connector and lower.
3. Once downloaded, perform the following actions:
   • [For Windows] Copy the infobright_jni([_32|_64])bit.dll to C:\Windows\infobright_jni.dll
   • Copy the zipped “tInfobrightOutput” directory to this directory: [Install Root of Talend] \plugins\org.talend.designer.components.localprovider_5.0.1.r74687\components\tInfobrightOutput
   • Copy “infobright-core-3.4.jar” to [Install Root of Talend]\lib\java
4. Running Talend in Windows
   • If using Windows, run talend as Administrator.  If you don’t, you will see odd “Access Denied” or “Accesse Refuse” error messages when trying to use the connector.

Now, run Talend.  At this point, you should see “tInfobrightOutput” component listed underneath Databases > MySQL.  When you use the component, you will want to specify which version of Infobright you’re using: IEE or ICE.