Everything falls in to place
Invariably, data in various format needs to be drawn from a multitude of disparate sources. Data Gateway Service (DGS) enables most forms of information to be securely extracted from almost any origin, then validated and manipulated. Data snapshots can be taken at specific times during the process when required to create a data mart.

Information access and retrieval is critical to the effectiveness of any client reporting system. Without accurate data, the integrity of the finished document is seriously compromised.

However, extracting this information can be a time-consuming and difficult task, particularly when it may exist in numerous locations and stored in a variety of formats. Mining such data invariably involves significant IT department input and can lead to an inefficient use of resources. DGS provides a single, secure access point for the retrieval, filtering and processing of information from both inside and outside your organisation creating a virtual warehouse for all your data. With an interface designed to make this process as straightforward as possible, data consistency and accuracy are assured through validation and sign-off procedures.

With an interface designed to make this process as straightforward as possible, data consistency and accuracy are assured through validation and sign-off procedures.

Manual Data
As well as data sourced from existing environments, the DGS incorporates the ability to create and maintain data manually through DGS maintenance screens. This allows data series to be managed manually as well as simple or rich text commentary that can be used within the final output reports, as well as by external systems wishing to source the same information.

Custom Coding
Along with all the other user interface accessed functionality, the DGS is able to be customized from within a very simple but powerful developer framework to provide additional functionality such as filtering, transformation, validation and merging of more than one data source.

Extraction
Data can be pulled out of any database, web-service or file that is accessible to the runtime environment.

Standard databases such as those from vendors such as Oracle, Sybase, DB2 UDB, SQL-Server or AdvantageDb (and most non-standard ones) as well as Excel or flat data files can be accessed – and if procedural languages are not available to them naturally then the DGS can provide this through VRS custom code to facilitate this.

Filtering
Data can be filtered in a number of ways using the standard user interface, providing simple result set filters directly against the data, or allowing referenced filters to empower the data to produce results such as targeted market commentary or portfolio specific stock stories.

More advanced filters can also be created through custom code.

Merging, Transformation and Sorting
Once pulled into VRS – data can be transformed and or reordered.

Data coming from multiple systems can easily be merged together to form heterogenious database.

Loading (the Emergence of the Virtual Warehouse)
The DGS is a “virtual data warehouse”. This is essentially an advanced straight through repository, collecting data from source and delivering it directly to the requesting system. This has a significant advantage over classic repositories in that it doesn’t need the expensive development involved with architecting them. When a new data source is identified, then the source system can be added quickly to the DGS lists and the data made available to the end users. No complex (and expensive) development and administration is required.

Snapshot Data
If required the DGS can snapshot this data and store it in the virtual warehouse. This can be done automatically or on-demand.

Data Warehouses
Finally, if you already have a data warehouse then your effort isn’t wasted. The DGS can simply plug in to your repository as if it was another data source.

Alternatively, if your require a warehouse but don't already have one, Vermilion can install one, allowing the DGS to feed off of it as desired.

Data Validation
Whether the data is being collected once through a data snapshot or every time, the DGS can be asked to run through any kind of data validation, testing situations such as consistency, totals, thresholds or differences with previous reporting periods - alerting the report reader or the workflow that a problem has been detected before the report gets to the client.

Data Sign off
All data coming through the DGS may have sign-off requirements applied to it – preventing reports from coming out using it until the sign-off is obtained.

Data Security
Data coming through the DGS has VRS security permissions applied to it to ensure the data is kept safe.