hen research firm Trade Compass was looking for a way to help business subscribers who visited its Web site navigate a maze of statistics and regulations about international trade, it turned to a new kind of tool.
Trade Compass installed Oracle's Express online analytical processing server with Oracle's new Web access feature. Now, subscribers can query data on Trade Compass' site to analyze business trends directly from their Web browsers. "There's nothing the user has to install," says Joh
n Fontaine, Webmaster for the Washington research company. "They just subscribe and are given access-it's very quick, simple and easy."
Trade Compass isn't the only company that has spotted the potential benefits of Web-based OLAP. Vendors also are banking on Web products to broaden the appeal of OLAP outside its niche as a complex, esoteric technology used by financial analysts and other specialist "power users."
Early Days
Nearly all OLAP vendors have adapted their products for the Web. But many early Web products have offered only a limited set of basic features, such as the ability to view previously generated reports and basic trends in data. The products typically "allow users to select from a set of predefined templates and to select the data to fill them-there's no real authoring, no ad hoc reporting," says Wayne Eckerson, a senior analyst at the Patricia Seybold Group in Boston.
Often missing is the ability to drill down into data sources for detailed information or calculat
ions, says Frank Gillett, a senior analyst at the Hurwitz Group in Newton, Mass. But now that the explosion of intranets is generating a big potential market, vendors are working hard to fix those limitations.
"Companies are gradually putting more of client-server product functionality into the Internet products, beginning with improvements to the quality of the interface," Eckerson says. These new tools, many of which are due to ship by year's end, feature beefed-up OLAP server Web support and tap component technologies such as Java and ActiveX in an effort to equal some of the graphics and report-presentation capabilities provided by desktop query and reporting tools.
Desktop tools vendor Brio Technology Inc. in Palo Alto, Calif., was quick to move in this direction, says Gillett. But other vendors are heading the same way. Last month, Oracle announced WebAgent 1.1, which adds Java and VRML support to its Express OLAP server; it also has better integration with Oracle's Web server. Comshare Inc., in
Ann Arbor, Mich., has announced Commander DecisionWeb, client software based on Java that provides ad hoc analysis and report writing with the Essbase OLAP server from Arbor Software Corp. in Sunnyvale, Calif. At the high end of the market, Seagate Software in Vancouver, British Columbia, this month added a Web gateway that supports all the functionality of its OLAP server.
There's more to come: San Mateo, Calif., vendor InfoSpace Inc. says it will ship a Java-based front-end for IBM's DB2 OLAP product, which is expected to ship this year. InfoSpace says its software will let users write reports, run and publish queries, and create interactive Java charts.
Cognos Inc. in Ottawa this month plans to add Web access to reports generated from its PowerPlay OLAP server; by year's end, it plans to upgrade PowerPlay to allow ad hoc queries from a browser. Planning Sciences International in Boston announced last month a plan to add Java support to its Gentia OLAP suite, with a Java client that can be used t
o access the suite from any desktop.
Still Waiting
Some users say those kinds of enhancements will be needed to make the products worth deploying. Currently, vendors "aren't quite there yet in terms of recreating on the intranet what we're doing now," says OLAP user Rich Rood, a senior financial analyst with oil company Atlantic Richfield Co. in Los Angeles. He has evaluated several Web OLAP products, including one from Arbor Software, and has decided to wait until they mature. "People have to realize they need to become Internet technicians in order to use [Web OLAP products]. Overall, the products need to be more user friendly," he says.
A more subtle problem, says analyst Gillett, is that existing OLAP users have to adjust to using products based on a browser interface that's designed for a broad audience, rather than being tailored to the needs of OLAP power users.
Users also need to watch for potential performance problems; providing even limited OLAP capabilities to anyone with
a browser can multiply the load on a server. "IS managers should be prepared for an initial demand spike on the servers that could affect performance," says Brian Murphy, a senior analyst at the Yankee Group Inc. in Boston.
Rita Graham, IS manager at Delicato Vineyards in Manteca, Calif., agrees. Use of Brio's OLAP software took off at Delicato when users discovered they could access Brio's product from their favorite piece of software-a Web browser. "Thirty-five people are using brio.insight to create reports," she says, "and we had a huge performance hit when more people took advantage of the Web access viewers."
But the technology's value outweighs any problems, she adds. "Surfing the Web is easy. A 10-year-old can do it. So people think that if a technology is on the intranet it must be easier to use," Graham says. As a result, salespeople and other staff at Delicato, which grosses $80 million in annual revenue, now get faster access to information. "They no longer have to wait for us to run a
report," Graham says.
Besides helping with sales analysis and other internal needs, OLAP helps the winery quickly access data to show that it meets strict federal regulations enforced by the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which spot-checks the vineyard's compliance. "They come in, they arbitrarily pull a bottle or two, and we have to prove exactly what's in it," Graham says. That requires pulling information from large volumes of data-Delicato ships millions of gallons of wine each year. "We must be able to identify all of our product at any time-all the way back to the grape."
Vendors are working on other kinds of Web integration besides allowing browser access. Information Advantage Inc. in Minneapolis recently added the capability to integrate its DecisionSuite software with an Internet search engine. Users can use the engine to search OLAP reports online and other information in a data repository. Like other vendors, Information Advantage has also added browser access to OLAP ca
pabilities such as the ability to perform data analyses, drill downs, ad hoc reporting, and interactive graphics.
Analysts say vendors are planning enhancements that will provide capabilities tailored specifically to exploit the Internet. Trade Compass' Fontaine agrees. "You'll see further integration with more Java and ActiveX components that are designed for publishing and using information specifically on the Web," says Fontaine. He predicts that as more applications gain Web interfaces, the way users work will change. Salespeople will be able
to use Web-based forms applications to enter data after each sales call, analyze sales and call volumes using OLAP, and evaluate whom to call next-all without leaving their Web browser.
Some vendors are working on Web-based user interfaces that provide capabilities beyond those in even non-Web-based products. SAS Institute Inc. in Cary, N.C., is developing an interface using VRML that will show a report's results as a 3-D floating bar graph that can be rotat
ed. Users will be able to drill down into the analysis by clicking on any of the data elements. The report could also contain hyperlinks to other non-textual data such as animations or video clips. SAS expects to deliver the software next year.
But in the near term, the challenge for vendors is to deliver Web functionality that matches what users can get now from proprietary front-end products. "Users really want OLAP slice-and-dice, the ability to generate sophisticated reports, both desktop and scheduled, and they want ad hoc reporting," says analyst Eckerson. By year's end, it should be clear whether
vendors have succeeded in meeting
that demand.
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hen research firm Trade Compass was looking for a way to help business subscribers who visited its Web site navigate a maze of statistics and regulations about international trade, it turned to a new kind of tool.
