Analytics for XML |
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There are several very good reasons why companies are increasingly adopting XML as a data standard.
- Using XML and XML data models optimizes business processes by streamlining the sharing of data
- It's a very flexible data format that improves a business' ability to quickly respond to changes in their process or information needs
- Industry standards bodies and government regulatory agencies are increasingly mandating that reports be provided using XML
Figure 1. Skytide operates directly on raw XML data, and recognizes all of the XML standards that have been developed for particular industries, for fast time to analysis and a complete view of business performance.
However, there's a downside as well - primarily that it's much harder for business users to get the information, reports, and analysis they need to make effective business decisions. If a company is using conventional business intelligence (BI) tools, then in order to generate reports, the XML data must be shredded, loaded into a data warehouse, and custom data models built. And often times users have to settle for analysis of only a subset of all available data. Once built, the process works well. But if the XML data changes, for example, a call center changes their IVR (VXML) or an investment bank needs to track new information regarding derivative trades (FpML, FIXML), or the business user needs an additional report with more detail; it's a time consuming process working with IT to incorporate the changes for each step of the report generation process.
Skytide removes the barriers to accessing your XML data
Skytide is the only next-generation business analytics solution that operates directly on raw XML data. The XML-based Skytide Analytical Platform uses XML models to immediately recognize and analyze any XML data - and ALL of your XML data - along with traditional structured data for a complete view of business performance. And because it's developed on industry standards including Xpath (XML Path Language), and Java, it is very fast and easy to deploy, taking days instead of the months that are required for conventional BI systems. And because Skytide completely bypasses the extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) steps, it easily adapts to changes to the XML data enabling business users to quickly create new reports without having to know the deep technical skills such as defining a STAR Schema or editing an ETL mapping definition. This results in faster time to analysis, more complete analysis because of access to all data types and all data sources, and much less total cost because of the decreased dependency on IT.
XML standards bodies
One of the reasons for the fast adoption of XML is that many industry standards bodies have agreed on XML as their new data standard. Because we're XML-based, Skytide supports and works with all of these standards out of the box. Here's a list of many of the standards bodies that have adopted XML and their name for their particular standardized version, each of which links to their website. If your favorite standard is not on the list, please let us know at (info@skytide.com). We are always interested in learning about and supporting new XML Initiatives.
| Industry or Standards Organization | XML Standard Name |
| Insurance \ ACORD | ACORD |
| Association for Retail Technology Standards | ARTS |
| Pharmaceutical | CDISC |
| Chemical Industry Data eXchange | CIDX |
| Financial / Equities Trading | FIXML |
| Financial / Derivatives Trading | FpML |
| Health Sciences (American National Standards Institute) | HL7 |
| Human Resources | HR-XML |
| Global Learning Consortium | IMS |
| Global Justice XML | JXDM |
| MathML | MathML |
| Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization | MISMO |
| General Business - The Open Applications Group | OAGI |
| The Open Travel Alliance | OTA |
| Paper & Forest products \ Papinet | papiNet |
| Petroleum Industry Data Exchange | PIDX |
| Agriculture \ American Crop Protection Association | RAPID |
| Standards for Automotive Retail | STAR |
| General Business \ Universal Business Language | UBL |
| Petrotechnical Open Standards Consortium | WitsML |
| Financial / Reporting & Analysis | XBRL |