The Integration Engineer
When it just has to work.

“Is not the beginning of wisdom the words: ‘I do not know’?”

– Data, Star Trek: Next Generation: “Where Silence Has Lease“

If the beginning of wisdom is to realize what it is that we do not know. NULL, by its definition is this not knowing.  We do not know what NULL is, this is why it is NULL. (more…)

I found this video on YouTube.

Theoretical discussion of integration of data and information.

Speaker is Alan Nash

Alan discusses two fundamental problems in information integration:

(1) How to answer a query over a public interface which combines data from several sources and

(2) How to create a single database conforming to the public interface which combines data from several sources.

Alan is using databases as both source and target and uses them in his examples of how data exchange and integration problems are addressed and solved.  This is a little bit heavy, but if you feel up to it, it is 53 minutes long.

This is a still a pretty high level discussion, even the practical examples are abstracted.  I have used a tool that helps do the tasks described here.  If you have this type of task, you might want to check out a company called Convertabase at http://www.convertabase.com