Application development and management software company Platinum Technology Inc saved up about a year’s worth of announcements for its user conference last week. Most important among them are a second suite of tools utilizing its Poems services framework, these for decision support. The first suite, ProVision, are database and systems management programs. Platinum says the new tools, code-named Project C (it’s working through A to Z), enable users to interrogate multiple data warehouses concurrently using shared, web-based metadata. It claims Project C will eventually work with third party query and analysis tools that support the Microsoft Repository – and subsequently the 2.0 version of the Repository Platinum and Microsoft are jointly developing. However Project C, at least initially, will ship with Platinum’s own repository, not Redmond’s. Project C uses metadata created by DecisionBase, Platinum’s repository-based data management and transformation tools, and analysis data can be viewed over the web. Because the metadata can be re-used, Platinum claims decision support application development time can be drastically reduced. Project C uses Poems’ communications, administration, scheduling, installation and security services. It’s also being fitted with a 3D data visualization tool and is said to enable developers to more easily link a company’s disparate data warehousing and transaction processing systems. Furthermore Platinum says DecisionBase can now also be used in conjunction with Microsoft’s DTS Data Transformation Server tool built into the MS Repository. That should mean that customers can extend DTS-based data marts running on Windows NT to other platforms across an enterprise using DecisionBase. DecisionBase has also been extended to support SAP R/3. It can translate SAP’s proprietary code into English-like descriptions enabling developers to integrate SAP data with other business information without having to learn the SAP R/3 language and without having to build an SAP-specific data warehouse. Platinum is supposed to have agents for ProVision, which now supports cross-platform network management, bundled with Windows NT 5.0.
Reverse-engineer
Platinum has integrated the Erwin entity relationship data modeling tool it picked up with its acquisition of Logic Works Inc with Paradigm Plus, its own object modeling tool. Whether the two together have any chance of unseating the de facto industry leading modeling tool, Rational Rose, remains to be seen. Platinum says Erwin can be used to reverse-engineer existing relational database applications and migrate the design to Paradigm Plus for the development of object-based applications. In addition Paradigm Plus models can be linked to take advantage of Erwin’s complete-and-compare functions and apply them against the leading relational databases. The integrated versions – the $3,500 Erwin 3.5.2 for NT and $4,000 Paradigm Plus 3.6 for NT and Unix – are available next month. Meantime Platinum has web- enabled its Advisor application tool which integrates, analyzes and presents information from the company’s Process Continuum other third party process and project management tools; its Harvest change and configuration management and Paradigm Plus component modeling applications. The second version of Advisor is available next month. Platinum claims a new Raveler tool can manage web-based content creation, deployment, production and measurement. It says Raveler can also display performance and usage information, implement automatic versioning to protect intellectual property and provide project and workflow status. It’s up on NT for NT and Unix-based web sites and can be used in conjunction with NT-based authoring tools. It supports Netscape, Microsoft and Apache web server software and is priced from $24,000.
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