The Slumberland data center is comprised of two line-of-business systems: a retail system that relies on an Oracle database that supports point-of-sale, inventory, accounting and merchandising functionality; and a warehouse management system used to manage the flow of products within the company's distribution centers.

The data gathered and generated by these systems is then fed into a business intelligence (BI) platform, based on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 on a Windows server using Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) and Microsoft SQL Server BI Development Studio.

Full-feature compatibility with DataDirect Connect for ODBC provides migration for customers moving applications from 32-bit to 64-bit architecture and uses the same wire protocol design that eliminates the need for database client libraries, simplifying installation and administration, while improving performance, said Progress DataDirect.

In addition to DataDirect Connect64 for ODBC, Slumberland has also implemented DataDirect Connect64 for SSIS, which enables development, deployment and 32-bit or 64-bit runtime execution of Microsoft SSIS packages for non-SQL Server databases like Sybase, Oracle and DB2, according to Progress DataDirect.

Seth Mitchell, infrastructure team manager at Slumberland, said: "While Oracle offered a simplistic data provider solution involving a port of its 32-bit client to the 64-bit platform, it really didn't give us the performance or capacity we needed. Moreover, the Oracle provider that was previously included with SQL Server was deprecated by Microsoft, discouraging future development using it. The standards-based data drivers from Progress DataDirect offered the performance, scalability and depth of support we needed to ensure consistent, reliable data connectivity for our most critical business systems."

A service of YellowBrix, Inc.