Vendors To Broaden Capabilities Of Reporting Apps

Three business-intelligence software vendors are broadeningthe data-access and analysis capabilities of their report-distribution platforms. Actuate Software, MicroStrategy, andReport2Web this week will roll out enhancements to theiranalytical and reporting apps.

Actuate will introduce Open Analysis, an upgrade to itsreporting application that provides links to major onlineanalytical processing engines. The enhancement will letusers perform in-depth analyses on report data.MicroStrategy is adding an Extensible Markup Language engineto its Broadcaster report-delivery system, letting companiesdeliver more useful information to users and connect thatinformation to other applications that support XML. Also newin the product is support for server clustering to increaseapplication performance.

Report2Web, a startup, is expected to unveil software thatconsolidates and indexes reports from any reporting system,making it possible to search and view reports via a Webbrowser. Report2Web provides a single repository forreporting data, using Microsoft's Internet InformationServer. The repository serves up all of an organization'sreports, which are catalogued in user-defined folders andstored on a Web server.