In answer to all those sceptics that claim the enterprise data warehouse will not survive into the next century, MicroStrategy Inc has launched its relational on-line analytical processing tool for the World Wide Web, to turn a costly warehouse into a money spinner, it says. DSSWeb enables Internet users to perform complex analysis against large data warehouses via the Internet using any of the popular Web browsers as a front end. MicroStrategy founder and chief exective Mike Saylor says the f irm aims to commoditize the data warehouse by enabling companies to open up decision support services not only within their organization, but to investors, suppliers, partners, distributors and customers. In this way they can exploit the wealth of data stored in the warehouse for financial and commercial benefit. Saylor who confesses to modeling himself on Bill Gates and Larry Ellison, wants to make his company the Oracle of decision support. Saylor cites the example of a large telecommunications company which through its billing systems, holds large amounts of data about its customers. He suggests these companies might sell this information back to customers or other suppliers, over the Web. As an example, he says a law firm, spendi ng hours on the telephone with clients, may want to relate its telephone bills to each customer to include in its charging structure. Syndicated data houses, such as Axiom Corp in the US, credit card companies, tour operators, banks, he said, would now have an affordable way of enabling all sorts of users to access and analyze data in their warehouse. What makes DSSWeb different from anything Oracle Corp or others may be touting, says Saylor, is the fact it will sit on top of any of the lead-i ng relation-al databases, including Oracle, Informix, DB2, Sybase, Red Brick, Teradata and Non-Stop SQL. DSSWeb integrates with Micro-Strategy’s relational on-line analytical server DSS Server. Since it uses a standard Web Browser supporting Hyper-T ext Mark-up Language 2.0 or higher, such as Netscape Corp’s Navigator, Spyglass, Mosaic or Internet Explorer, it requires no other client software. At the server end, DSSWeb needs Windows NT 3.51+, Web server software supporting WIN-CGI and 32-bit O pen Data-Base Connectivity. MicroStrategy says DSSWeb is scalable up to very large databases with a Terabyte or more of data. Saylor says until now, data warehousing was only appropriate for the top 2,000 global firms due to the costs of entry. With Web access, he says it will be opened up to the 100m or so people that have Web browsers. DSSWeb is available immediately. A four-user concurrent license, which the company says in intranet mode would serve up to 100 users, is 33,000 British pounds , about $50,000.
