Whatever happened to Sybase Inc’s OLAP products? We know we didn’t blink and miss the introduction of Sybase’s Power Dimensions multidimensional OLAP tools built for it by WhiteLight Systems Inc. The question came up when we talked with WhiteLight about its new portfolio template software. WhiteLight says as far as it’s concerned Sybase still plans to ship its work. However UK trade reports suggest Sybase may have been investigating alternative, or perhaps additional OLAP solutions, and that in particular it has been making eyes at little-known Acuity Management Systems (AMS), Reading, Berkshire, developer of the Acuity/ES OLAP suite with bi-directional links to relational databases taking advantage of each vendor’s extensions to SQL plus integrated ODBC APIs. AMS, one of the Acuity Group Plc companies wouldn’t comment. Asked to described its OLAP strategy senior Sybase executives re-affirmed it is WhiteLight but gave no reason for Power Dimensions’ non-appearance nor its supposed trawling of potential OLAP partners. It didn’t say when the technology will actually be delivered. Meantime WhiteLight’s portfolio template is essentially a pre-defined credit risk program for large financial institutions that can be used against the WhiteLight OLAP server. At $100,000 on NT or Solaris it is not cheap technology, though WhiteLight says it’s just the first a series of templates it is creating for use by different parts of the financial sector. Others will be announced next month. It is also developing additional front-end tools including graphing and workflow modules for use with templates.
