Do you check yesterday's weather forecast when deciding on what to wear today? I assume not, and that sums up my response to the question above. But let me explain with a bit more detail.
Real-time data capture is one of the new requirements for data integration solutions and there is a real good reason for it. In today's fast-paced world
information loses its relevance to reality and value to the organization
at a faster rate. We talked about this in depth in our webcast on fast data with many examples. In previous blogs I discussed the value of making operational decisions with timely, relevant data: from offering new products/services and better customer experience to better use of resources and operational efficiencies.
When I talk about real-time data for business intelligence sometimes I get the response: "Not all information needs to be in real time". True. Some business processes do not need to use data that has only a few seconds or minutes of latency. But business requirements and processes change fast too. What businesses need now may change in a matter of weeks or months in our competitive world. Why not have your "data plumbing" be future-ready so IT can support the business immediately when they need low latency? And based on what I hear from Oracle GoldenGate customers, once business has access to low-latency data, they use it well, see the value, and demand it for other data sources. So, it would not be a wasted effort.
There are also technical benefits to real-time data integration: Why move data in batch when you don't need to? Moving only the changed data, as opposed to all tables, is a better use of your network capacity to begin with. In addition, if you use log-based change data capture it does not impact your source systems' performance and availability, keeping end users happy. Loading the data warehouse with only changed data every few minutes also minimizes batch windows for the data warehouse.
Because of these business and technical benefits, more companies are moving to real-time data integration architectures. I invite you to read our customer examples such as DIRECTV, Tata Sky, Xait,Ufone, and see the business and technical benefits of real-time data integration.