In-Depth

Snapshot of BI tools supporting Web services

• By Lana Gates
• December 31, 2002

Actuate Corp.
San Francisco, Calif.,
www.actuate.com

Actuate 6 and Actuate  Spreadsheet Option -- Web Services API, pure SOAP, WSDL-certified API; integrates XML capabilities into generation, storage and delivery of Actuate content.

Business Objects
San Jose, Calif.
www.businessobjects.com

BusinessObjects, WebIntelligence and BusinessObjects Developer Suite -- Cross-platform API; info can be accessed and formatted in XML for use in other systems; XML can be used as info source for creating reports within BusinessObjects. Pricing starts at $415 per user; Developer Suite is $15,000 per user.

ClearForest Corp.
New York, N.Y.
www.clearforest.com

ClearResearch, ClearEvents and ClearSight -- Reads and processes any type of unstructured textual data; produces richly tagged XML; can automatically integrate tagged XML content from multiple sources. Pricing starts at $50,000.

Cognos Inc.
Burlington, Mass.
www.cognos.com

Cognos Series 7 and Cognos Web Services SDK -- Builds connections between Cognos software and multiple applications. Price is $10,000 per developer seat

Crystal Decisions
Palo Alto, Calif.
www.crystaldecisions.com

Crystal Enterprise, Crystal Reports and Crystal Analysis Professional -- End-to-end support for XML; creates reports off and exports to XML documents; turns Crystal reports into ''XML Report Web Services.'' Pricing starts at $195 for Crystal Reports Standard.

Dimensional Insight Inc.
Burlington, Mass.
www.dimins.com

DI-Diver, DI-ProDiver, DI-WebDiver, DI-ReportDiver and DI-Broadcast -- Gives users access to interactive data analysis and OLAP functionality as well as access to published reports in XML, CSV, BBF, HTML, Tab Delimited and PDF. Pricing ranges from $50,000-$120,000 (server-side components, up to 100 client licenses).

Hummingbird Ltd.
Toronto, Ontario
www.hummingbird.com

Hummingbird BI -- Connectivity to XML data via ODBC drivers; ability to integrate info from multiple sources via XML into reports, tables, charts and maps. Pricing varies according to number of seats and functionality.

Informatica Corp.
Redwood City, Calif.
www.informatica.com 

Informatica PowerAnalyzer -- Ability to import/export object definitions via XML format. Pricing starts at $50,000

Information Builders Inc.
New York, N.Y.
www.informationbuilders.com

WebFocus -- Can read XML as input and generate output in XML format, which can be sent to an end user or another app. Pricing starts at around $15,000.

Insightful Corp.
Seattle, Wash.
www.insightful.com

StatServer and  Analytics Serve -- Web-based deployment of data analysis and visualization. Pricing starts at $30,000 for single CPU, unlimited clients.

MicroStrategy Inc.
McLean, Va.
www.microstrategy.com

MicroStrategy Web Universal and MicroStrategy SDK -- Uses XML natively for all API communications, allowing all MicroStrategy BI functionality to be exposed through Web services. Pricing forWeb Universal starts at $370 per user or $30,000/CPU; SDK is $4,995/developer.

SQL Power Group Inc.
Toronto, Ontario
www.sqlpower.ca

Power*Dashboard -- Web-enables the process of management reporting and key performance indicator tracking. Pricing starts at $39,000

Targit
Atlanta, Ga.
www.targit.com

Targit Analysis 2K2 -- Can pick up any XML file, put it into a SQL server and then analyze/report off that. Price is $20,000.

See the related story ''XML meets the data warehouse''