Developer March

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WHITE PAPERS

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EXCLUSIVES

SAP, IBM and Others Face Oracle's Double Barrel for India 2010 Reporting Tools Glory

The Business Intelligence (BI) industry has spent decades perfecting the process of data collection, storage, cleansing and distribution – with good reason considering the mounds of data amassed in corporate data stores today. Taking BI to the next level means not only transforming data into information, but also getting it into the right hands, at the right time and in the correct format to be used for timely decision- making. BI is not about exclusivity, it’s about every player in the corporate network having the information they need and the tools necessary to turn that information into sound decision-making.

The key to making informed decisions is having the right data in the right place at the right time. Executives and line managers rely on BI and reporting tools to deliver timely, accurate, and relevant data for both strategic as well as operational decisions. A key issue is that all parties in the corporate information supply chain have different requirements regarding BI and reporting tools.

Users of enterprise reports and BI need information in the proper format, regardless of the origin of the data or how many sources contain the necessary components.

Application developers and system architects need a way to reduce the time they spend making custom reports.

IT managers need a way to control access to backend systems, safeguard data, and reduce the amount of data replication used to feed BI tools.

The majority of business users today are still unhappy with the information they receive to support their decision-making and this could be because even though data is growing at massive rates, most data is still being analyzed on spreadsheets. Most reports are a good starting point for business users’ understanding, but when it comes to comprehending what the data actually means – the trends, the root causes, etc., decision makers continue to be frustrated with the information and tools they have available. As a result, business users continue to ask for one-off reports aggravating the original problem of IT’s reporting backlog.

Database Reporting Tools Winner at Great Indian Developer Awards 2008: Naveen Asrani, Manager, MySQL Developer Marketing, India & APAC receiving the award from Vijay Anand, Vice President Engineering, Oracle Corporation

On the IT side, we continue to make incredible progress on data storage, integration, access and delivery. However, line of business users - the business decision maker, isn’t interested in the success in this area; their primary concern is answering such questions as:

Which customers are the most profitable? Why is that? How do we raise the profitability of those customers who fall short?
Where are manufacturing and inventory bottlenecks? How can efficiencies be created in these areas?
What is driving support costs? How can these costs be decreased?
Which sales channels perform the best with new products? Which are more profitable? What is it about their product mix or discounts that make them so? And so on…

Smart business decisions are the direct result of having the right information at the right time. However, in most environments decision makers are only provided predefined standard and parameterized reports; or in some cases ad-hoc query and reporting tools to make “on the fly” reports. However, complexity in the data schemas, nuances in data encoding, calculation and the time it takes to learn more advanced decision support tools often deter most decision makers from using these tools – leaving users with predefined reports and the reliance on an intermediary to access deeper information.

Database Reporting Tools Winner at Great Indian Developer Awards 2009: Sanket Atal, Senior Director of R&D, Oracle India Development Center receives the award for Oracle Database 11g.

Reporting technology is designed for information distribution. Whether it’s ad-hoc or predefined, the reporting paradigm addresses information delivery, publishing and distribution. That is why reporting products have menu items that predefine the query, format the resulting data and then publish that report to the people it was designed for. When describing BI technologies, reporting is often lumped together with analysis to categorize a technology as “reporting and analysis.” This makes some sense because analysis is what users ultimately do with a report once it is received. If the user knows ahead of time what data is needed and considers the job complete once the report has been published, then reporting technology is the right tool for the job. Every information consumer in the organization, from executives to production workers, will use these reporting systems.

Database Reporting Tools Winner at Great Indian Developer Awards 2009: Arun Rao, who heads the Crystal business for SAP Business Objects in India, receives the award on behalf of the SAP Business Objects Crystal Reports team

Saltmarch Media's annual Great Indian Developer Awards honors software products across 12 categories, based on their productivity, innovation excellence, universal usefulness, simplicity, functionality and most importantly on the ground feedback from India’s software developer ecosystem. In the Database & Reporting Tools category, the final shortlist consists of Oracle Database 11g, Microsoft SQL Server 2008, IBM Infosphere Warehouse, Oracle MySQL and SAP Business Objects Crystal Reports. MySQL was the first product to win in this category in 2008 while it was under the Sun Microsystems umbrella. This was followed by a tie in 2009 between Oracle Database 11g and SAP Business Objects Crystal Reports.

If there is a particular database reporting tool that you personally endorse to your colleagues or you evangelize about them at the first opportunity you get, here is your chance to vote for it (voting closes April 10 2010) and see it win this prestigious award. Who knows? You could win along with it too. At the end of the voting process, a lucky draw will be conducted and one person will receive a surprise gift from our prize sponsor. So visit the 2010 Great Indian Developer Awards website and cast your vote. It counts!

VIDEOS

PlayBook - Change the Game! Tablets are being billed to change the level of mobile communications. A new ground comes with its own challenges and oppurtunities. Andrew will talk about the BlackBerry PlayBook which...

PODCAST&VIDEOS

Interview with Sunil Rao, Head of Nokia Developer, India Sunil Rao is Head of Nokia Developer, India. He is responsible for evangelizing new technology platforms, strategy and growth opportunities with Nokia's third party developers to create a...

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Security Architectures for the Rich Web While Web 2.0 technology and services have been common in the public sphere for a number of years, their uptake into the Enterprise has been relatively slow. Rich Internet Applications...

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Picking the Right Technology for Enterprise RIA We are entering an era of Rich Internet Applications (RIA), and many enterprise development managers are facing the dilemma - which way to go - remain with tried and true Java or .NET or...