Lexington, Massachusetts-based Open Data Corp has launched FindOut! an ad hoc database query tool. The company says that FindOut! has the flexibility of ad hoc query tools but Open Data says it has the intelligence to understand the relationships of data held within relational databases. This means that users can drill down for further information, but also move across to different pieces of data and the tool will generate follow on questions. It has a semantic layer that sits between the user and the data; the presentation is in business terminology. This layer is the Business Dictionary and is built by an automatic modeller. It is organised in the structure of a book, index, chapters and so on. Within the Business Dictionary is the information likely to be of interest to the company’s end users; data that is of more use to application development is not including the dictionary. Information in the dictionary is renamed and given titles that business users will understand. The Business Dictionary resides both on the server and client, but updating is not automatic and information systems staff have to do this. Open Data says updating takes a matter of seconds once the dictionaries have been created but even if an update has not been carried out, and data in the database has changed, FindOut! has intelligence to recognise this, alerting end users of the fact, but they cannot update the dictionaries. At the client side is an engine that automatically generates SQL queries which has two advantages: it enables real ad hoc querying as users are not tied to pre-defined and written questions; and users do not have to understand SQL. Open Data claims it is the only query tool available for OS/2; it also runs under Windows. All in all, the tool requires a machine with 12Mb of RAM and 10Mb of disk space. The tool has native drivers to DB2, DB2/2, DB2/6000, Microsoft and Sybase SQL Server, Oracle7 and System 10. Open Database Connectivity will be used to link to desktop-type databases, like FoxPro or Access. The end user interface is #630 per station and the builder needed to create the environment, the business dictionary, database mapping and report write costs #3,000. Open Data earlier on this year secured $9.4m of venture capital in private equity financing, part of which will be used to push FindOut!
