Business Intelligence Network - The Vision for BI and Beyond

Using Enterprise 2.0 for Business Intelligence, Part 5

Information Syndication and Delivery

Published: June 25, 2008

In this fifth article in a continuing series, Colin White looks at using web syndication techniques in a business intelligence environment.

My previous article in this series, Using Enterprise 2.0 for Business Intelligence, Part 4, discussed how data integration and data warehousing applications can be extended to handle unstructured business and web content. This time, I want to continue the discussion of Enterprise 2.0 in a business intelligence environment by looking at how web syndication techniques can be used to deliver business data and content to data integration tools, and also to deliver business intelligence (BI) to business users.

What is Web Syndication?

Web syndication was intended initially for making Internet users aware of recently added or updated website content (the latest news or blogs, for example). With web syndication, a summary of the new content is published in a web feed file. The feed file contains information such as the title and description of the new content, and details about where it is located. Although the format of the file can be anything that can be transported using the HTTP protocol, it is generally in an XML format. Two common XML feed formats are RSS and Atom.

Users employ a web feed reader (sometimes called an aggregator) to locate and access new web feeds. The feed reader can be a part of a web browser or an email package, or may be a stand-alone product. Depending on the product used, a feed reader may run on a web client, internal web server or external web server. The server approach reduces network traffic between clients and websites. Companies such as Google, Microsoft, NewsGator and Yahoo all offer external feed servers. Internal feed servers are marketed by vendors such as Attensa and NewsGator.

To access web feeds, the user creates subscriptions that tell a feed reader the websites that contain the feeds of interest. The feed reader checks the appropriate websites for new content on a regular basis and informs users when new content is available. Users can then select any feed they are interested in and download its associated content by clicking on the web link in the feed. The user simply deletes the subscription to stop receiving a web feed.

Using Web Syndication in the Enterprise

Although web syndication is used most often to deliver public website content to web users, there is no reason why it cannot be used to deliver content within an organization, or even between organizations. Furthermore, web syndication does not have to be restricted to just delivering content from websites; it can be used to deliver any kind of business content or data. It could be used, for example, to deliver new business intelligence reports to interested subscribers. Other uses include:

• Filtering external industry information for relevancy and making it available to the appropriate teams and employees
  
  
• Republishing of purchased content to authorized business users
  
  
• Direct mass communication with employees, for example, from senior management
  
  
• Targeted and secure sharing of content between team members
  
  
• Delivering content to prospects, customers, partners, the media and other target audiences

One requirement that arises when using web syndication for delivering enterprise data and content is the ability to add metadata to the feed file to better describe the new or updated information that is referenced by, or contained in, the feed file. Some web feed formats do allow such additions. RSS namespaces, for example, enable information publishers to include XML schema in a feed file without the need to modify the core RSS specification.

Integrating and Transforming Feed Files

So far, I have presented web syndication as a way of delivering new or updated information to users through a web browser, email and so forth. Given that a web feed is simply an XML file, it means that any application that can consume an XML file can process a web feed. An example here is an integration server. The server could examine web feeds, filter out uninteresting content and then pass the remaining content to other applications, or even store it in a data warehouse.

The ability of web syndication to deliver data and content to applications and users is leading to a whole new generation of integration software solutions that can consume, produce, merge and transform web feeds for any type of business content or data. Examples of products here include Denodo Data Mashup Server, IBM Mashup Hub, Kapow Mashup Server and RSSBus Feed Server. These solutions employ a lightweight web-oriented architecture (WOA) and service bus that is inexpensive and fast to deploy.

Although I have only covered a few of the options for using web feeds in the enterprise and for business intelligence, it is easy to see the wide range of possibilities for using this approach to deliver and integrate enterprise data and content. Web syndication will not replace existing information delivery and integration solutions, but it does offer some exciting options for deploying new types of applications that operate in an Enterprise 2.0 environment.