Astera Adds Data Virtualization Functionality to Its Centerprise Platform

Astera Software has announced the release of its new Astera Data Virtualization solution, according to a blog post on the company’s website. The new capabilities will be part of an Astera Centerprise product that has undergone major architectural changes in the early part of 2019. Astera Data Virtualization creates and manages virtualized views of data as per custom business specifications. As a result, users can connect data from heterogeneous sources and create a single view without having to psychically move data.

Using virtual data models, users can access data from structured (relational databases, Excel), unstructured (PDFs, text files), and semi-structured (EDI, XML, REST API) sources. Astera Data Virtualization also gives the option to establish entity relationships, define layout options, and enable caching in the abstraction layer. Once created and deployed, a VDM can be used as a single-source entity.

A drag-and-drop feature enables users to build and display relationships between source entities to specify the referential integrity of a virtual database table based on common fields. The platform also gives the option to create one-to-one or one-to-many relationships according to the user’s business requirements. Astera is supplying customers with three different layout building options as well. Users can modify the attributes of the database table, such as data types, DB type, and length of the fields.

Astera Data Virtualization provides database caching that enables faster query execution in the virtual database by temporarily copying source records in a cache database. A virtual data model deployments monitor serves as a centralized windows where users can view and manage all the deployed virtual databases in real-time, providing all the important health indicators needed.