Sypherlink has upgraded its metadata discovery and mapping tool Harverster, improving the software's heuristics matching capabilities that analyze data, metadata and referential data.

Harvester 5.0 also provides tighter integration with the extract, transform and load process, and a graphical user interface with point-and-click navigation for reviewing and mapping database relationships, the company said.

In general, Harvester helps companies discover the contents of databases earmarked for integration between partners, far-flung departments or merging companies. The software automatically discovers and maps metadata in multiple databases, so an organization can find out where key data exists and access it from multiple, disparate sources.

The latest version of Harvester offers expanded database statistics and sample data, the vendor said. The upgrade can capture primary and foreign keys, and indexes on columns to give analysts a better idea of how data may be queried or used by an end application.

Enhanced heuristics mapping analysis lets users define how the automated analysis is run against the collected data and metadata. Specifically, the "name matching" and "data matching" heuristics can be turned on or off individually, and weighted in importance.

This results in tighter control over the software's ability to determine the field-level relationships across multiple sources at once. In addition, the feature is helpful when data sources have little or no documentation.

The improved GUI provides point-and-click navigation for faster review and mapping of database relationships. Sypherlink officials said. In addition, there's better visual displays to help map data sources faster and identify data-quality issues sooner.

Finally, new design screens allow for the definition of ETL instructions and enable the automatic export and usage within data management tools, such as Informatica PowerCenter, IBM DataStage and Pentaho, an open-source vendor.

Pricing for Harvester 5.0, which was released last week, was not disclosed.

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