IBM Information Server is a client-server architecture made up of client-based
design, administration, and operation tools that access a set of server-based
data integration capabilities through a common services layer
In this section, we briefly discuss the following topics:
Component overview
Client tier
IBM Information Server provides a number of client interfaces, optimized to
different user roles within an organization. The clients tier includes IBM
InfoSphere DataStage and QualityStage clients (Administrator, Designer, and
Director), IBM Information Server console, and IBM Information Server Web
console.
There are two broad categories of clients — Administrative clients and User
clients. Both these types of clients have desktop and Web based interfaces
Administrative clients
These clients allow you to manage the areas of security, licensing, logging,
and scheduling.
– Administration tasks are performed in the IBM Information Server Web
console. The IBM Information Server Web console is a browser-based
interface for administrative activities such as managing security and
creating views of scheduled tasks.
– For IBM InfoSphere DataStage and IBM InfoSphere QualityStage project
administration, you use the IBM InfoSphere DataStage Administrator
client. It administers IBM InfoSphere DataStage projects and conducts
housekeeping on the server. It is used to specify general server defaults,
add and delete projects, and to set project properties. User and group
privileges are also set using the Administrator client.
These clients help perform client tasks such as creating, managing, and
designing jobs, as well as validating, running, scheduling. and monitoring
jobs. The IBM Information Server console is a rich client-based interface for
activities such as profiling data and developing service-oriented applications.
– The IBM InfoSphere DataStage and QualityStage Designer helps you
create, manage, and design jobs. You can also use the Designer client to
define tables and access metadata services.
The Designer client allows you to move DataStage and QualityStage
objects between projects on the same Information Server engine, or on
different Information Server engines. You can also use the Information
Server Manager client to move objects from one domain to another.
The Information Server Manager supports the model of having separate
systems for the developing, testing and running of DataStage and
QualityStage jobs. It facilitates the model by providing secure and
managed methods of moving objects between the different systems.
– The IBM InfoSphere DataStage and QualityStage Director client is the
client component that validates, runs, schedules, and monitors jobs on the
IBM InfoSphere DataStage Server.
User clients
Server tiers
The server tiers of the Information Server Platform that includes the Services,
Engine, Repository, Working Areas, and Information Services Director Resource
Providers as follows:
Note:
Server 2003.
Server tiers
The server tiers of the Information Server Platform that includes the Services,
Engine, Repository, Working Areas, and Information Services Director Resource
Providers as follows:
Services tier
IBM Information Server is built entirely on a set of shared services that
centralize core tasks across the platform. Shared services allow these tasks
to be managed and controlled in one place, regardless of which suite
component is being used.
The Services Tier includes both common and product-specific services:
– Common services are used across the Information Server suite for tasks
such as security, user administration, logging, reporting, metadata, and
execution.
– Product-specific services provide tasks for specific products within the
Information Server suite. For example, IBM InfoSphere Information
Analyzer calls a column analyzer service (a product-specific service) that
was created for enterprise data analysis. The shared service environment
allows integration across IBM Information Server because they are
deployed using common SOA standards.
IBM Information Server products can access three general categories of
service:
– Design
Design services help developers create function-specific services that can
also be shared.
– Execution
Execution services include logging, scheduling, monitoring, reporting,
security, and Web framework.
– Metadata
Using metadata services, metadata is shared “live” across tools so that
changes made in one IBM Information Server component are instantly
visible across all of the suite components. Metadata services are tightly
integrated with the common repository. You can also exchange metadata
with external tools by using metadata services.
The common services layer is deployed on the J2EE™-compliant application
server IBM WebSphere® Application Server, which is included with IBM
Information Server.
Note:
helps you build, run, integrate, and manage dynamic Web based
applications typically involving HTTP protocol.
Repository tier
The shared repository is used to store all IBM Information Server product
module objects
with other applications in the suite. Clients can access metadata and results
of data analysis from the respective service layers.
1 (including IBM InfoSphere DataStage objects), and is shared
This is the parallel runtime engine that executes the IBM Information Server
tasks. It comprises the Information Server engine, Service Agents, and
Connectors and Packaged Application Connectivity Kits (PACKS
– The IBM Information Server engine consists of the products that you
install, such as IBM InfoSphere DataStage and IBM InfoSphere
QualityStage. It runs jobs to extract, transform, load, and standardize data.
The engine runs DataStage and QualityStage jobs. It also executes the
parallel jobs for Information Analyzer tasks.
– Service Agents are Java™ processes that run in the background on each
computer that hosts IBM InfoSphere DataStage.They provide the
communication between the Services and Engine tiers of Information
Server.
– Connectors and PACKS
IBM Information Server connects to a variety of information sources
whether they are structured, unstructured, on the mainframe, or
applications. Metadata-driven connectivity is shared across the suite
components, and connection objects are reusable across functions.
Connectors provide design-time importing of metadata, data browsing and
sampling, run-time dynamic metadata access, error handling, and high
functionality and high performance run-time data access.
Prebuilt interfaces for packaged applications called PACKS provide
adapters to SAP®, Siebel®, Oracle, and others, enabling integration with
enterprise applications and associated reporting and analytical systems.Engine tier2).
Working areas
These are temporary storage areas used by the suite components.
Information service providers are the (data) sources of operations for your
services. Using IBM InfoSphere Information Services Director, you can create
services from five sources — IBM InfoSphere DataStage and QualityStage,
IBM DB2 for LUW, IBM InfoSphere Federation Server, IBM InfoSphere
Classic Federation Server for z/OS, and Oracle Database Server.
Information Services Director (ISD) Resource Providers
1.2.2 Topologies supported
IBM Information Server is built on a highly scalable parallel software architecture
that delivers high levels of throughput and performance. For maximum
scalability, integration software must do more than run on Symmetric
Multiprocessing (SMP) and Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) computer
systems. If the data integration platform does not saturate all of the nodes of the
MPP box or system in the cluster or Grid, scalability cannot be maximized. The
IBM Information Server components fully exploit SMP, clustered, Grid, and MPP
environments to optimize the use of all available hardware resources.
Note:
operating systems:
The Information Server Platform 8.0.1 release supports the following
System z™)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Linux 10 (Intel, AMD, System p™,Microsoft Windows Server® 2003 (32-bit)
IBM Information Server supports multiple topologies to satisfy a variety of your
data integration and hardware business requirements, as follows:
For all topologies, you can add clients and engines (for scalability) on additional
computers.To be continued in Next post....GridAn Application Server is a high performance transaction engine thatClients are supported on 32-bit Microsoft® Windows XP Pro, Vista, andTopologies supported
