ANALYZING CLIENT DIFFERENCES
By Mark Hammond
Two decision-support developers are enhancing their respective offerings with software that provides tighter integration between Web client and full-client data analysis tools and streamlines the creation of data marts.
Business Objects Inc. is shipping an upgrade to its suite of business intelligence software that features InfoView, a seamless interface between its full-client and Web software.
Separately, Cognos Corp. announced it would ship next month DecisionStream, a data movement engine that it acquired last December with its $10 million purchase of British developer Relational Matters plc.
Business Objects' InfoView will provide easier use and administration for organizations that have deployed both BusinessObjects, the client version of the company's OLAP (online analytical processing), query and reporting software, and WebIntelligence, the Web version, said company officials in San Jose, Calif.
The enhanced compatibility appeals to pharmaceutical manufacturer Eli Lilly & Co., which has some 5,000 users of Business Objects software. About 500 of them use the Web version, and Lilly intends to migrate many of the 4,500 full-client users to the Web over the next several years, said Brent Houk, Lilly's Business Objects coordinator.
"The Web is becoming very important, just for ease of management," said Houk, in Indianapolis. "It saves us so much time and effort from actually installing on desktops, maintaining the middleware and upgrades are very difficult if you have 5,000 users."
The common InfoView interface will make it easier for users and the IT department alike, he said. "As we take this out to more and more users, they're not going to know the difference between the full-client and Web versions," Houk said.
In the upgraded suite, WebIntelligence Version 2.5 boasts support for Solaris, AIX and HP-UX, expanding beyond Windows NT. The upgrade to Version 5.0 of BusinessObjects has new integration between reporting and analysis functions.
Business Objects' suite upgrade also introduces Broadcast Agent, a reporting and broadcast server for mass data distribution and prescheduled report generation. Set Analyzer, a query tool aimed at advanced users that improves performance against large data stores, is also new.
For its part, Cognos, in Burlington, Mass., said DecisionStream will feature a new Cognos-like interface and support for the company's metadata. DecisionStream uses a so-called dimensional framework for data mart creation, enabling designers to reuse dimensions, such as time and location, for faster construction of data marts in areas such as sales, marketing and manufacturing, Cognos officials said. The result is a "virtual warehouse" of related data marts built on a common framework, the officials said. DecisionStream features native access to leading relational databases and supports leading OLAP servers as targets.
DecisionStream will support NT, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX and Tru64 Unix. Pricing was not announced.