Monday 14 December 2015

IBM InfoSphere MDM v11.5 Installation - Experience the Usability Enhancements

IBM InfoSphere Master Data Management v11.5 leverages features in Installation Manager v1.8.2 and provides a UI that is more understandable, appealing and quicker.

Auto-population of default values
Default values are populated for most fields that enables the end user to reduce time spent using the Installation Manager GUI.

Default values populated

Tablespace names
It is possible to use the same tablespace name for multiple tablespace placeholders in the Database Panel.

Obtain Server details from Operational Server Panel
For the User Interface Panels, when the end user decides to use the same server as that used for the operational server, it is possible to enable a checkbox and populate those details automatically, thereby reducing time taken for retrieving WAS details.
Server Details


One Validation Panel per Feature
There is one validation panel per feature facilitating an easy view of the validation results.

Separate Validation Panels

'Ignore'  error message
The option to ignore error and warning messages and proceed with the the Installation is provided.  However, it is recommended not to ignore the Error messages generated by the validations.

Ignore Errors

Separation of Installation and Configuration
The configuration of Master Data Management has to be performed after the installation.  The Installation Manager GUI provides the required detail to the user on invocation of this target.


Friday 4 September 2015

Fight Threat and Fraud Using InfoSphere Identity Insight

An elderly woman aged 58 years has applied for a visa and is at the Consulate.  The monitor shows the consular there, that the the applicant's son and daughter are in that country for the past 8 years and 4 years respectively and have good records.   Without much delay, the consular can approve her visa.

A man aged 32 years has applied for a visa and is at the same Consulate.  His address is the same as that of a culprit held last week.  This means that he is in some way related to that culprit.  Withholding his visa is better.

A woman applies for a Personal loan at a Bank.  The Bank official searches her family's records and finds that her husband has not been paying the installments of a Personal loan for the past six months.  His Savings Bank account has not had credits for the past eight months.  The woman has a huge credit card balance.  The Bank can easily decide whether or not to offer her a loan.

All this is possible only when a system can identify a person (an entity), the relationships that this person has, and to give alerts based on the activities performed by the person and relations over a period of time.  This is precisely what InfoSphere Identity Insight does.

InfoSphere Identity Insight establishes accurate identity of an individual, uncovers complex relationships between individuals and applies complex event processing algorithms to evaluate transactions by the individual and associates.  The system generates alerts when it finds a questionable situation, thereby enabling us to fight threat and fraud.

Links:
IBM - InfoSphere Identity Insight

Saturday 8 August 2015

InfoSphere Master Data Management - Support for SSL enabled databases

InfoSphere Master Data Management v11.4 FP3 supports SSL enabled DB2 and SQL Server databases.

Obtain the certificate from an SSL enabled database, and use the keytool to create a trust file from the certificate. 
keytool.exe -import -alias db2_ca -keystore trust.der  -storetype PKCS12 -file cert.der

Provide the trust file path and the password in the Database Panel of the Installation Manager for InfoSphere Master Data Management.  Gold data is loaded and the product is configured to work with the SSL enabled database.

The Database Panel provides fields to provide SSL related data.
Database Panel in Installation Manager  
When Silent Install is used, the below keys can be used to configure SSL.
  • user.db.ssl.enabled
  • user.db.ssl.file.path
  • user.db.ssl.password
  • user.db.ssl.store.type(JKS or PKCS12)
For example:
When SSL is enabled:
<data key="user.db.ssl.enabled,com.ibm.mdm.advanced" value="true"/>
<data key="user.db.ssl.file.path,com.ibm.mdm.advanced" value="D:/Work/SSL/trust.p12"/>
<data key="user.db.ssl.password,com.ibm.mdm.advanced" value="xxxxxxxx"/>
<data key="user.db.ssl.store.type,com.ibm.mdm.advanced" value="PKCS12"/>

When SSL is disabled:
<data key="user.db.ssl.enabled,com.ibm.mdm.advanced" value="false"/>
<data key="user.db.ssl.file.path,com.ibm.mdm.advanced" value="none"/>
<data key="user.db.ssl.password,com.ibm.mdm.advanced" value="none"/>
<data key="user.db.ssl.store.type,com.ibm.mdm.advanced" value="none"/>
Please note that user.db.ssl.enabled is a mandatory attribute from MDM v11.4 FP3.

Links:
Support for SSL encryption
Configuring SSL support in a DB2 instance