Disy Unveils New Version of Spatial ETL Tool for Talend

Disy Informationssysteme has announced the release of a functionally enhanced version of its plug-in called ‘GeoSpatial Integration for Talend’. This spatial extension software designed for Talend platform allows SDE.ST_GEOMETRY spatial data, which is frequently used in ArcGIS environments, to be embedded in data integration and transformation processes.

The new version of the ‘GeoSpatial Integration for Talend’ plug-in now also supports the spatial data type Well-Known-Binary (WKB) and therefore the reading and writing of SDE.ST_GEOMETRY data. Data from ArcGIS sources using this data type can for the first time be integrated into a spatial ETL process with Talend for reading or writing. This paves the way for uniform data processing of alphanumeric and spatial data within the Talend environment for a variety of new application scenarios.

Growing importance of spatial data

The plug-in considers the increasing relevance of spatial data in corporate decision-making. “With the explosion of IoT and smart devices, geospatial data will help organizations extract more meaningful insights and augment their ability to better understand their customers, products and markets, in order to innovate”, says Ciaran Dynes, senior vice president of products at Talend. For example, companies planning to open new stores or sell new products and services rely on geospatial data to evaluate consumer needs.

Extensive range of functions for spatial ETL

The Disy plug-in seamlessly integrates with the Talend tool palette and enhances it with a variety of spatial features. It provides its own components, which can be used in ETL jobs by drag and drop, as well as special spatial routines that extend the functionality of some of the more than 900 Talend components.

During the integration and transformation process it is possible to calculate areas or distances, to edit geometries and create buffers, convex hulls or bounding boxes. Further routines support the user in checking geometry validity, comparing multiple geometries in terms of spatial relationship types (overlap, touch, or contain) as well as in measuring the distance between geometries. Coordinates can also be transformed into points or points into lines and geometries can be immediately converted to different coordinate systems. The data sources PostGIS, Shapefile, Oracle Locator and Spatial as well as SpatiaLite are supported. Due to the new WKB format readout, this range could now be extended by data that is stored by ArcGIS as SDE.ST_GEOMETRY in PostgreSQL or Oracle.

Data quality assurance

According to Gartner and Forrester Research, Talend is the sole open source-based data integration tool that is one of the world's leading platforms – not only for ETL processes regarding the development of data warehouse solutions, but also for the integration of streaming big data or data processing in the cloud. Talend provides numerous functionalities that ensure data quality and a high level of efficiency. In addition to the graphical user interface it offers a variety of team-based collaboration functions, such as a shared repository, audit and job comparison, impact analysis, debugging, process tuning, versioning and automatic generation of documentation.

For the operation, the platform provides a wide range of features – from administration to monitoring, such as high availability and load balancing, a deployment manager, user administration, execution planning, introduction of checkpoints and troubleshooting, activity monitoring and a log server with its own dashboard. This way, developers and administrators always keep track of the current processes and the status of data processing. Thanks to Disy’s new plug-in these special Talend features are now also available for spatial data processing.

The ‘GeoSpatial Integration for Talend’ plug-in for Talend Open Studio can be downloaded free of charge from Disy’s website. A commercial version is available on a subscription basis for Talend customers requiring support, using the plug-in for Talend Data Integration Entry-Level or one of the Talend platforms.