Sybase Inc is going to make life easier for programmers building data warehouses with a new 6.0 release of its S-Designor data modeling suite. Users have typically had to generate data warehouse models by hand, or commission custom tools. Sybase claims a new browser-enabled WarehouseArchitect tool, available as part of an S-Designor 6.0 suite or standalone, enables users to reverse engineer and import source information, as well as generate data schemas for warehouse databases. Following data modeling specialist Logic Works Inc’s lead, Sybase is initially supporting the Red Brick Systems Inc data warehouse, star and snowflake schemas, plus its own Sybase IQ engine. It will add support for Oracle and Essbase databases in future. With its link to the Dynamo web application execution engine in Sybase SQL Server database, a new web module in AppGenerator 6.0 enables HTML pages to be created dynamically from data models. Currently templates can only be created using Dynamo, but Sybase expects to add support for other web-based database application engines in future, including Allaire Corp’s Cold Fusion. In addition to PowerBuilder and Visual Basic, the applications generator now also supports the ability to create Powersoft Optima ++ 1.5 and Borland Delphi 2.0 components. A new viewer component can make data model and metadata designs available as read-only graphics across entire organizations. Sybase says it’s making WarehouseArchitect APIs available for use by third party tools, the first of them the Carleton Corp Passport data extraction tools which Sybase already resells as part of its QuickStart data mart package. WarehouseArchitect is priced at $5,000. The core DataArchitect 6.0 design and generation module has some minor enhancements and costs $2,500. The ProcessAnalyst data flow diagram tool is $1,500. The MetaWorks group design component now also supports shared data dictionaries written in DB2 and Ingres and costs $1,000. AppModeler is $1,000; AppModeler Desktop is $300 and the viewer is $400. An S-Designor Warehouse suite including WarehouseArchitect, DataArchitect, ProcessAnalyst, AppModeler and MetaWorks is priced at $9,300. Sybase’s Powersoft division claims 30,000 S-Designor seats. It acquired S-Designor from French company SDP SA in May 1995. Meantime, Logic Works is reportedly introducing a Universal Directory to browse and publish warehouse data existing in data warehouses, with information about business origin and physical location of data. Meta Group research on data warehousing suggests 52% of users’ workload is on maintenance and 48% on new development.
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