Simba Technologies' CEO Corner

MDX Query Language, XMLA, ODBO and IBM

I was recently poking around to see what IBM is doing in the MDX query language space.  I tend to discuss the MDX query language space rather than OLE DB for OLAP (ODBO) or XML for Analysis (XMLA) because MDX is really the core of multi-dimensional connectivity as I see it.

IBM announced its DB2 and InfoSphere Warehouse software, code-named Cobra http://www.idug.org/component/content/article/12-news/11924-db2-97.html which has extended IBM's support for MDX.  I have not yet had a chance to try out this software.  If you are interested, there is more information on IBM's MDX query language support in Cubing Services at http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/db2luw/v9r7/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.dwe.cubemdx.doc/mdx_concepts.html.  IBM Cubing Services also supports ODBO and the information for this is at http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/db2luw/v9r7/topic/com.ibm.dwe.cubeserv.doc/topics/c_cub_odbo.html.

It is also worth looking at the following slide deck http://download.boulder.ibm.com/ibmdl/pub/software/data/sw-library/education/bichats/20090130.pdf.  If you look at the slide on Page 9, it seems that IBM will have Cognos, AlphaBlox and third party apps connect to Cubing Services via the MDX query language.  This is a significant point to note for those of us in the MDX world because this means IBM is treating MDX as a first class interface - IBM's own apps will also use MDX to connect to Cubing Servcies.  I take this as another strong vote for MDX as the de-facto multi-dimensional query language standard.

I am also a strong believer in Excel as BI client.  Users seem to love Excel and Microsoft is investing significantly in Office/Excel BI.  When looking at the IBM slide deck, it is interesting to note that they specifically call out Excel as a client for Cubing Services - both on page 9 and page 19.

ODBC 3.80 is here!

Finally, ODBC 3.80 is here!  According to Pak-Ming Cheung from Microsoft, “We’re excited to announce that version 3.8 of the Microsoft ODBC DM (Driver Manager) will be released in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2”.  You can read more in his blog post at: http://blogs.msdn.com/data/archive/2009/07/06/odbc-dm-3-80-in-windows-7-and-windows-server-2008-r2.aspx.

 

Basically, there are 4 main new features in ODBC 3.80:

1.       Streamed Output Parameters

2.       ODBC C-Type Extensibility

3.       Asynchronous Connection Operation

4.       Better Management in ODBC Connection Pooling

 

As a leader in the data connectivity space in general and ODBC in particular, Simba is definitely committed to supporting ODBC 3.80.  If you would like more information, please don’t hesitate to contact us to discuss further.

On-Demand Business Intelligence

Brad Peters wrote an interesting article entitled "On-Demand Business Intelligence Takes Off" at http://www.information-management.com/specialreports/2009_150/business_intelligence_bi-10015655-1.html.  Interesting article and worth a quick read as he explains why an on-demand BI solution makes sense.  Brad states that "It has been said that only 20 to 30 percent of the total cost of a traditional on-premise software platform is license cost – the remainder is the cost of implementing, managing and operating the software (people, hardware and other resources)."  In my experience, I have found that there is a huge customization cost in the BI world and users often just want to pull their data to Excel and work from there.  In fact, in his keynote at SAP Sapphire this year, Hasso Plattner commented that many users pull their data from SAP BW into Access and from there into Excel.  This is an important point to note as Hasso says this is not appropriate.  Even for on-demand BI, it will be important to make sure we have good connectivity to Excel as this is the application that most business users are comfortable in.

MDX Query Language and SAP BusinessObjects Roadmap

Larry Sackett, who is writing a book about SAP BW and the MDX query language http://www.sap-press.com/product.cfm?account=&product=H3066&shoppingcart=002, recently posted a blog entry about the SAP BusinessObjects roadmap.  Very straightforward and concise and worth a quick read: http://lbsackett.typepad.com/larry_sackett/2009/06/index.html.

ODBC Driver for Microsoft HealthVault

At Simba, we have a SDK to build a custom ODBC driver.  We have been working with Microsoft HealthVault and decided to use our ODBC SDK to build a custom ODBC driver for Microsoft HealthVault using their webservice API.  For those of you who are not familiar with Microsoft HealthVault, it is a secure online storage for all of your healthcare data.  You can get more information here: http://www.healthvault.com.  This is a very cool concept to be able to store all of your healthcare information in the Cloud and have access to it from wherever you are.  You have total control and privacy and only people you authorize can view your data.

 

HealthVault has a nice webservice API for developers and it was pretty easy to take our ODBC SDK and build an ODBC driver for HealthVault - it took us around two weeks to build this driver.  We found there were a lot of very good use cases for the HealthVault ODBC driver. For example, consider a diabetic person.  This person can buy a blood glucose meter from various companies that will allow them to connect to HealthVault and upload their daily blood glucose levels http://www.healthvault.com/personal/devices.html?type=device. Then, this person can use the HealthVault ODBC driver to pull this information into Excel and chart the data so they can easily see how they are doing. Another example is an athlete who wants to track their heart rate and how much they are running. Again, there are devices that will track this information and allow easy uploads to HealthVault from where they can use the ODBC driver to pull data to Excel and easily track their progress.

 

Simba is supporting Microsoft HealthVault by allowing free usage of our HealthVault ODBC driver for personal use.  You can get more information or download the ODBC driver here: http://www.simba.com/ODBC-Driver-for-HealthVault.htm.

 

Since our ODBC SDK allows any software developer to easily build a custom ODBC and/or JDBC driver for any data source including ISAM, XML, object oriented, SCADA, or cloud data source, it was very easy for us to build the HealthVault ODBC driver.  If you can think of other things we could build an ODBC driver for, we would love to hear from you. (Especially, if you think it cannot be done)

SAP Sapphire and the SAP BusinessObjects Explorer

At Sapphire this year, the big announcement from SAP was the SAP BusinessObjects Explorer.  Since the SAP acquisition of the Business Objects company, one of the major product integrations that has been publicly discussed has been the Polestar and BWA - Business Warehouse Accelerator (formerly called BIA - Business Intelligence Accelerator). The first time I saw this demo was at the Business Objects Field/Partner Kick-off in January 2008. Well, they are now saying the product will be available shortly and has been officially named the SAP BusinessObjects Explorer. If you haven't seen it, it is a slick product for ad-hoc query and analysis. It has a Google-like simple interface for entering your English language queries and it works on the underlying TREX engine from SAP which significantly boosts the performance of BW. You can query billions of records in seconds.

The keynotes from Sapphire are available online and you can see the demos they had: http://www.sap.com/community/events/sapphire_online_2009/index.epx.

I also attended a session with Dan Kearnan from SAP where the key points about the SAP BusinessObjects Explorer were:
- Combines a BI interface for simple, fast, and very intuitive information search & exploration solution built on top of SAP BW Accelerator
- Fast data exploration of very large information to quickly answer questions and find root cause
- For the casual information worker whose needs for BI have been underserved by traditional BI tools
- Make IT successful - scale to thousands of casual business users with very low TCO

Also, in his slides, Dan called this a 'BI Appliance'.  I understood this to mean that the BWA/Explorer combination was the BI Appliance which then sat on top of your existing SAP BW system.

Then, it got more interesting because Dan spoke about Wave 2 which he called a 'Source Agnostic BI Appliance' and which he said was coming at the end of 2009. The key points for the Wave 2 were:
- Source-agnostic, high performance, stand-alone ‘appliance’ based on SAP BW Accelerator technology fronted by SAP BusinessObjects BI
- End-to-end SAP BusinessObjects BI capabilities fully integrated
- Built-in analytical capabilities and write-back/planning services
- Not a replacement or SAP BW as an enterprise data warehouse but suitable for departmental, LOB BI initiatives

The diagram included with Wave 2 showed that the BWA would connect to any data source using the Data Integrator product.  However, connectivity to BW would be direct.  I would assume that the BWA would then integrate the data coming from BW and coming via the Data Integrator product.

Timeline on Oracle's acquisition of Sun

I was reading an interesting little timeline on eWeek about how Oracle ended up acquiring Sun Microsystems.  You can read it here http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Infrastructure/Anatomy-of-a-MultibillionDollar-IT-Acquisition-894207/?kc=EWKNLDAT05142009STR1.  Interesting timeline and also interesting how IBM and HP were also both involved.  In my experience in business, many deals don't happen because in uncertain times, people are afraid of making decisions for fear of being wrong.  What is interesting in the above timeline is that both IBM and HP could have acquired Sun, but ultimately, it was Oracle that made the bold decision to do so.

This reminds me of when my partners and I decided to acquire Simba in 2000.  Initially, I was against the deal.  One of my partners, Dale Reimer, was a strong supporter of doing the deal.  My hesitation was ultimately a good thing because it allowed Dale to negotiate a lower price.  However, it was Dale's boldness that got us to pull the trigger and acquire Simba.  Of course, the next challenge was taking what we had bought and making it even more successful.  I have found that when there are good deals to be had, human nature seems to always make us suspect as to "is this deal too good to be true?"  That is the point where the smart people are able to determine what to do.  Oracle seems to be able to pull the trigger at such times (so far so good) and my old partner Dale was also able to pull the trigger.  I need to make sure I learn from both Oracle and Dale Reimer. 

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Release 2

Not sure if you saw this... http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/r2.aspx  Some good details about the next version of SQL Server.

IBM Cognos Partner Forum

I was at the IBM Cognos Partner Forum earlier today and there was a keynote where Rob Ashe (IBM GM and former CEO of Cognos) spoke.  He spoke quite well and seemedvery enthused about business.  This is the first time I have heard him speak live and found he was quite good.  Seems IBM Cognos is doing well.  A couple of interesting things I heard:

1. Rob commented that he felt Cloud Computing was a paradigm shift on the order of client/server and web computing.

2. Rob said that in Q4, Cognos had the highest organic growth in the last 10 years.  That I found very interesting.  This is what we are seeing in Simba's OLAP / MDX query language business as well.

In the keynote, the speakers also took shots at Oracle, MicroStrategy, and SAP Business Objects.  SAP Business Objects got more shots than the other two - interesting to note because it would indicate that this is where they see their strongest competition.

In the keynote, the speakers also talked a lot about performance management.  This seems to be more the focus than general BI.  Also interesting to note because this is where SAP and Business Objects did a lot of acquisitions (good acquisitions like Outlooksoft, Cartesis, Pilot Software, ALG Software) and also and area where I felt Hyperion has traditionally been strong.

MDX query language for Oracle 11g OLAP update

We have been getting very good responses to our Beta for the MDX query language provider for Oracle 11g OLAP and have decided to extend the Beta till the end of May.  Anyone who joins the Beta gets a copy of this ODBO provider that is usable until the end of this year.  You can sign up here: http://www.simba.com/evaluate-MDX-Provider-for-Oracle-OLAP.htm.

Things have been going well with the development of the ODBO provider.  We have been working closely with the Oracle OLAP team and getting good feedback from them as well.  They have been helping us make sure we have a really solid, well-tested product.

One interesting thing we found from some of the Beta customers is that they thought this was an Excel only solution.  Yes, we are focusing all the efforts for v1 on Excel, but this is planned to be a full blown MDX provider for Oracle OLAP.  Therefore, you will get the entire MDX query language and this interface will be similar to what you have with Microsoft Analysis Services or SAP Business Warehouse.  Although v1 will be ODBO only, we are planning to support XMLA in future versions.  The priorities for what we support and when will be customer driven.  One question I have is after Excel, which MDX application do you think we should test with and support next:

1. SAP Business Objects Crystal Reports

2. SAP Business Objects Voyager

3. MicroStrategy 9

4. Microsoft Reporting Services

5. Microsoft SharePoint BI

6. IBM Cognos Business Intelligence 8

7. Panorama NovaView

or something else?