Solutions for Development Managers

If your responsibilities include managing the budget for IT development, ask yourself:

  • Are you responsible for delivering new applications on time and on budget?
  • Are issues with data connectivity adversely impacting developer productivity?
  • Do you look for ways in which your developers can concentrate more on building innovative solutions to business problems, and less on wrestling with snags involving data connectivity?
  • Do you have applications that use proprietary APIs, making it difficult to take advantage of them from reporting, analysis, integration, and development tools?
  • Are your mainframe application developers up to speed with the latest technologies, but lacking the skills necessary to leverage mainframe data and business logic?

Are Bundled Database Drivers Really Free?

Many development managers have learned from painful experience that the database drivers provided with databases themselves are just not up to the demands of many real-world business and production applications. Database vendors regard application connectivity as merely one small aspect of their overall concerns. They see it as primarily your job, not theirs, to get your applications working with their products. Unsupported versions and functionality, incompatibility between driver, database version, and client library packages — any one or all of these combined can wreak havoc with your development budget.

What Can DataDirect Do For You?

Your organization doubtless seeks to leverage the agility and competitive advantages that XML data integration can afford it. Chances are it also has invaluable legacy assets residing on mainframes, from which great benefit can be derived by leveraging them in new and innovative ways. Standardizing on DataDirect for your data connectivity and systems integration architecture dramatically reduces the cost and complexity associated with configuring and testing data connectivity and integration between systems. It can help your developers to:

  • Save time by easily updating code when underlying databases are changed or upgraded, thanks to the common architecture shared by DataDirect's components.
  • Increase productivity by eliminating the considerable time spent integrating and testing drivers for every possible combination of database and platform version. One DataDirect Connect driver supports all the current releases of a particular database (such as Oracle), and DataDirect components are fully backwards-compatible with previous releases of the database.
  • With our OpenAccess SDK product, your development team can quickly create custom ODBC, JDBC, ADO.NET, and OLE DB drivers for specialized data stores, making those applications and data instantly accessible to hundreds of reporting, analysis, integration, and development tools.
  • Enable developers to transparently reuse mainframe assets in their modern web-based applications without having to learn mainframe standards or programming, using DataDirect's Shadow family of products.
  • Reduce time to market and code-intensive XML efforts in developing SOA applications; DataDirect can cut down to 1/20th the code a developer must write, on average. DataDirect offers the easiest way to develop applications and/or reports when dealing with various data sources (XML, relational, and legacy).
  • Enable your staff to bypass the time wasted wrestling with configuration and compatibility issues associated with client software by using DataDirect's clientless architecture.

Why Use DataDirect?

DataDirect products are built on open standards. This emphasis on interoperability ensures that DataDirect will adopt no proprietary extensions that can slow down your development projects. All our middleware components undergo rigorous testing using our proprietary in-house testing suites as well as externally-developed suites.

Want to learn more about what DataDirect offers for development managers? Visit the following relevant pages on our website:

Data Connectivity

  • DataDirect Connect for JDBC — Give your developers Type 4 JDBC connectivity to SQL Server, DB2, Oracle, and more with the SPECjAppServer/ECPerf performance and scalability leader. Our common architecture across all drivers enables database-independent application development, reducing development effort and allowing developers to complete projects far more quickly.
  • DataDirect Connect for ODBC — Whether your developers need ODBC connectivity for Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, Sybase, Informix, Linux, Windows, UNIX, or any other database/platform combination, DataDirect Connect for ODBC delivers it. They gain the improved performance and simplified installment and administration of our unique wire protocol design that entirely eliminates the need for database client software and libraries.
  • DataDirect Connect for ADO.NET — Let your developers incorporate into their applications .NET connectivity to SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, or Sybase with the industry's only ADO.NET data provider having a 100% managed code architecture that eliminates the need for database clients, boosts performance, and delivers a flexible, secure connection.
  • DataDirect OpenAccess SDK — A custom driver development kit that allows you to quickly build ODBC, JDBC, ADO.NET and OLE DB drivers for specialized data stores. Data previously unavailable because of proprietary APIs or file formats instantly become accessible to hundreds of reporting, analysis, integration, and development tools. The data source can be anything such as files, relational stores, object stores, business objects, memory, applications, or Web services.
  • DataDirect SequeLink — If your developers need access to three or more data stores, SequeLink is your best choice. SequeLink is a complete end-to-end middleware solution that provides a universal client for ODBC, JDBC, and ADO.NET connectivity to all databases that are accessible via an ODBC 2x or 3x driver.

XML Data Integration

  • DataDirect XQuery — If your developers need to implement Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) approaches to data access, they'll find our powerful embeddable XQuery engine for driving XML-intensive applications indispensable. DataDirect XQuery gives enterprise-class systems high-performance access to Oracle, MS SQL Server, DB2, and Sybase (with MySQL soon to come), as well as XML documents (even multi-gigabytes) and EDI messages (X12 and EDIFACT), along with other formats such as tab delimited, comma separated value, dBase files, and many more. The easiest way to develop applications and/or reports when dealing with data sources of various types (XML, relational, and legacy), DataDirect XQuery gets developers productive fast with XML tools for query development and testing.

Mainframe Integration

  • DataDirect Shadow — Implement non-invasive, simple, reliable, scalable, and secure enterprise-class integration between .NET or J2EE applications and z/OS mainframe environments using the recognized leader in mainframe integration technology. Shadow's single mainframe architecture acts as a mainframe services bus, providing comprehensive support for web services, real-time events, direct SQL data access, and web enablement, allowing for seamless integration with Service-Oriented Architectures and event-driven architectures.

To learn more about how DataDirect addresses specific needs, see the following:

Ready to try our products? Visit the download page for a free 15-day trial (not applicable to Shadow products).

To speak with an expert about DataDirect solutions for IT operations, please call 1-800-876-3101 or submit a Request for Information form and an account executive will contact you.


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