A new baby is joining Astera family of products!! I am happy to announce the launch of Astera DataMapper 2008 Standard Edition, a powerful and easy to use data transfer and mapping tool. After the successful launch of Astera Centerprise Integration Studio last December, we received a very high demand from our customers for a powerful mapping tool. Good news for those who have been waiting this launch; Astera DataMapper 2008 provides over 100 data transfer permutations, interactive data mapping capabilities, statistics, data preview, and data profiling.

If you're working with files, Astera DataMapper 2008 covers Excel, delimited, and fixed length file formats and supports hundreds of different encodings. If you are importing / exporting data then most of the well-known databases are supported: SQL Server, Oracle, IBM DB2, MS Access, MySQL, and Sybase. Complex SQL queries, stored procedures, and simple table selection all are in DataMapper. Best of all, there is no need to install any database drivers or client software; install the application in few minutes and you're ready to go.

My favorite features are visual mapping, automatic layout detection, and the powerful mapping expressions builder. With automatic layout building you can save a lot of typing time because DataMapper recognizes field types, length, and precisions from existing data with 99% accuracy. You can edit the name matching based default map by simple drag and drop between source and destination. Easy, right!?

What I really believe distinguishes DataMapper from other competitive products is that you get full control over your mapping tasks. You can create a database lookup, list lookup, or expression maps. If you‘re sick of writing DTS VB scripts, good news is that these days are gone. Thanks to DataMapper's powerful expression builder, a user friendly Excel like formula, you can type in complex mapping expression including mathematical operations and a use of the built in functions that covers a wide range of mapping categories like data and time, string, financial, Math, etc.

One feature that I became addict to is mapping preview. I love this feature and you sure will. You don't have to run the transfer to see the result of your mapping work; map preview feature gives you the ability to preview every single map while you're building it. If you want to get the feel of the overall mapping task just click on preview destination or click on show destination statistics to get aggregate data about your mapping task. Error log is another cool feature. In case you have some problems with your data, Astera DataMapper ‘s transfer log display detailed information about each error like record number, field or fields caused the error, description of the error, and data from the source and destination if available.

No, you're not mistaken. This is still Astera Software. We've just updated our website look slightly. We have some new and exciting developments on the horizon and thought the old website could use some sprucing up to match. Stay tuned.

Welcome to the Centerprise Integration Suite support forum.

Over the next year or so, we plan to launch a series of products and features targeted at the data transformation and integration market. These products will provide a range of functionality from straightforward data movement to sophisticated data transformation, synchronization, profiling, cleansing, and integration features.

There are some key principals that guide the development, packaging, and marketing of our integration. All of our products will be designed and packaged in accordance with these principals. I would like to take a moment to outline some of these principals for our customers.

Openness: All of our products are designed to facilitate an open architecture. Most, if not all, components expose APIs that can be used by our customers to extend, customize, and integrate these products. We have an extensive set of sample programs to help educate developers in using the product in various scenarios. We plan to continually increase our sample library. Some of the samples are the actual code extracted from our product. Furthermore, detailed API and user documentation is available on our website for our customers and prospects. Our support forums are open to public and provide a wealth of information for data conversion professionals, integration architects, and other interested parties.

Performance and scalability: All of our product design decisions are evaluated to ensure high performance and scalability. We make extensive use of parallel processing throughout the product. Whether it is file parsing, transformation, or database writing, parallel processing is used to optimize all aspects of the product. We use a number of database optimization techniques including bulk inserts, batch updates, and parallel writes to deliver high performance and scalability.

Value: Our pricing and packaging decisions ensure that we are the best value for money in our industry. We have made a conscious effort to maintain a simple and rational pricing model. We have done away with charging for each separate connector, a practice common in our industry.