Attunity Stream is a client/server platform that is deployed between existing data sources and the 3rd party applications that mine them; such as ETL, data integration, application integration, or data synchronization applications that require regular access to the new or changed data of a data source. The product seeks to accelerate the processing capabilities of such tools by automatically detecting any changes in the target database and delivering to the 3rd party tools only that changed data.

The Attunity Stream agents are installed on the data sources themselves and utilize non-intrusive methods (log/journal monitoring, metadata interface and capture, etc.; actual methods are dependent on the data source) for the collection of changed data. The agents report this data to a "Staging Area" for consolidation and publishing to the end user tools. Such end user tools can access the stored data via two possible interfaces: An SQL-based interface, which supports ETL tools that can access the data (both real-time push and polling are supported) via SQL statements (the vendor notes many ETL tools as tested and supported, including IBM WebSphere DataStage, Oracle Warehouse Builder, SAS Data Integration Server, and more); and an XML-messaging based interface in which the 3rd party tools can listen for and act on real-time XML messages pushed to them by Attunity Stream.

The status of data delivered to the consuming products is maintained by Attunity Stream such that the position of the data at the last delivery is retained (i.e., the Attunity Stream remembers where the consumer is in the data stream). Individual consumers can request that this position be changed if necessary to support data recovery needs. Additionally, the Attunity Server staging area itself maintains the position of the last successful data retrieval from the target data source.

Multiple data sources are supported by Attunity Stream; including Adabas, DB2, Oracle, SQL Server, and VSAM files, to name a few. In the case of supported non-relational sources, Attunity Stream can automatically generate a relational schema to support SQL-based access to the data from ETL tools. And an XML schema can be auto-generated such that data can be presented to consumers as an XML document.

An additional component of Attunity Stream is Attunity Studio, a GUI interface for the management of the platform (Attunity Studio is used to manage the entire Attunity product line, providing a single console to any Attunity server).

Also available from the vendor are Attunity CDC components specifically targeted for use with SSIS (SQL Server Integration Services). Specifically, the SSIS CDC Accelerator provides integration with SSIS leveraging wizards and automatically generated configurations; while the new Oracle-CDC for SSIS (currently in beta; general availability is targeted for March of 2009) allows for the log-based integration of real-time Oracle data into SSIS.

Attunity Stream is available now. Contact the vendor for further information.