MANTA has introduced a new update, 3.26, and it’s a game-changer yet again. Business users are getting more insight into IT, EDC users have the full package of lineage, and an experimental Java scanner is now available.
Business and IT Collaboration Just Got Easier
The wide adoption of a data lineage platform is crucial for any organization to reach its true potential, but people without a technical background have difficulties understanding technical descriptions of dataflows. After all, your job is to deliver business results, not to swim in the ocean of complexity.
Creepy naming, complex flows with a lot of calculations, and transformations make lineage hard to work with. That is why we at MANTA continuously invest in features that facilitate easier understanding for everyone in the company. One of the key issues, typically, is how to do mappings between physical and conceptual terms so MANTA can use them to simplify lineage diagrams.
Nowadays, people do it manually or wish for AI to do it for them. There is one great source of mappings already available though—every organization has tons of existing architecture diagrams and models that can be used by MANTA to simplify lineage for less technical users.
MANTA already supported SAP PowerDesigner and ER/Studio, and now we are on board with ErWin as well. That means MANTA now supports three of the most popular modeling tools with over 60-70% market share. Sharing information between IT and business has never been easier.
Deeper ETL Understanding with IBM DataStage Scanner
ETL is another critical component of any data pipeline today. But there are so many flavors of it and so many different technologies one can use. MANTA already supported 3 of 6 market leaders, according to Gartner 2019 Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Tools. And now, we have one more!
Now that the IBM DataStage scanner has been released, coverage of the most popular ETLs is almost complete. You can enjoy DataStage ETL support, parallel jobs, and more.
The Java Way
Have you ever asked yourself what the most frequently used programming language in your company is? The TOP3 languages are Java, SQL, and Javascript. That simply means that the majority of your data pipeline is somehow hidden inside tons of SQL and Java code. With our great support for many many different flavors of SQL, our next big thing is to help our customers with the Java part.
MANTA’s Java scanner is available in experimental mode with support for programs with multiple entry points, using Spring framework with a basic Spring Bean configuration. We worked hard to deliver as quickly as possible because this is going to change the way we all think about metadata and how it can be used not only for governance but for quality, security, and engineering.
Full Lineage in the Package for Informatica EDC
The great news for all our customers is that we push harder with our native user interface. On top of that, our goal is to deliver the same or similar experience via supported third-party tools, if possible. This release brings new features for Informatica Enterprise Data Catalog—users will benefit from improved integration with MANTA.
Lineage, no matter how complex, is first visualized simplified to the column-to-column level without ETL, SQL, or other transformations visible. But with just one click, all tech-savvy EDC users can access all the additional details available thanks to MANTA.
Extended Cognos Support
Another very important area that helps with wider adoption of lineage by less technical users and supports data governance initiatives is a great understanding of the existing reporting layer. In the end, reports are THE place where most business people spend their time when working with data.
Even if more than 70% of companies still use Microsoft Excel, there are other very popular reporting solutions, and one of them is IBM Cognos, which has been supported by MANTA since release 3.25. The great news for every Cognos fan and user is that with this release, MANTA significantly extends the scope of supported Cognos features like data modules, uploaded files as sources of data, data sets, and reports with embedded SQL statements.
A Little Something for the Admins as Well
MANTA is all about automation, and the installation and update process is no exception. We have implemented a lot of changes and improvements over the past year and a half, but it is still not enough for us. We want to make it even easier for our customers to install and use MANTA. With this release, the install and update processes were unified into one single simple workflow. No more unnecessary steps, it’s automated as much as possible.
Ready to take a deeper look at MANTA? Just let us know and we’ll show you how it’s done.