News
Information Builder's New Focus
- By Scott Bekker
- 07/26/2000
With the recent release of WebFocus 4.3 -- its business intelligence tool (BI) -- Information Builders announced that its product will be fully integrated and bundled with Microsoft Corp.'s SQL Server 7.0.
In a related announcement, Information Builders (www.informationbuilders.com) also released version 4.3 of its Meta Directory product that is built around the open information model (OIM), a metadata model developed by Microsoft Corp. (www.microsoft.com) and adopted by the Metadata Coalition (www.mdcinfo.com).
WebFocus 4.3 is able to report from legacy, ERP, and relational data, as well as from data stored in SQL Server 7.0 OLAP Services. This means users can now generate complex reports using data stored in OLAP service cubes and merge it with ERP or legacy data for improved and more in depth reporting.
Later this year Information Builders plans to announce a business intelligence (BI) solution that bridges WebFocus with Office 2000 and BackOffice 2000. It is expected that the next version of WebFocus will enable users to generate OLAP Service cubes directly from WebFocus -- thereby offering an integrated solution for muiltidimensional cube reporting.
The Meta Directory release captures metadata from reports, or from extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) processes. Metadata is collected and pulled into a standard repository so users can view and manage their metadata from Information Builder's environment and still manage metadata from other vendors' tools --such as Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 and Computer Associates Inc. ERWin -- all at the same time. - Alicia Costanza
About the Author
Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.