Sagent Technology Unveils Industry's First Integrated Data Mart Solution for Microsoft Windows NT; Sagent Data Mart Solution delivers high-performance data access and sharing for business users throughout an enterprise

Business Wire, August 5, 1996

MENLO PARK, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 5, 1996--Sagent Technology, Inc. today unveiled the Sagent Data Mart Solution, a set of tightly-integrated tools for populating Windows NT-based data marts and presenting data to end users in meaningful, business-appropriate ways.

Based on an advanced multi-tier, multi-threaded architecture, the Sagent Data Mart Solution moves critical information closer to end users and makes it easy for them to share and collaborate on that information in order to make better, faster business decisions.

The Sagent Data Mart Solution optimizes the key benefits of today's data marts -- high performance and easy maintenance -- and combines them with tight integration, centralized control, workgroup functionality and support for complex business analysis.

"The fact is, current data warehousing and data access solutions have fallen short of delivering timely, accurate information in easily consumable forms," said Ken Gardner, president of Sagent Technology. "Users repeatedly cite inadequate performance and poor integration -- forcing them to cobble together disparate tools to build a complete data mart solution -- as major roadblocks for constructing effective data marts. We have addressed these problems by offering a tightly-integrated, turnkey solution architected to deliver high-performance end-user data access."

Tightly Integrated Tool Set

The Sagent Data Mart Solution represents the first integrated data mart solution that enables developers and users to leverage a single, tightly constructed system for all data mart tasks, from populating the data mart from various sources and creating metadata to providing end users with tools to intuitively access, distribute and collaborate on the data. According to a recent Patricia Seybold Group Open Information Systems newsletter, "Sagent is ideal for companies that want a turnkey, client/server data mart solution." This is accomplished by:

-- Treating information flow as an integrated whole. Rather than handling as separate functions the data extraction from the source system, population of the mart, and dissemination of data to end users, Sagent treats these functions as a single, easily understood process. Developers can create "Data Flow Plans" which map data from the source database or warehouse into the data marts and distribute the data to end-user desktops using visual, point-and-click tools.

-- Providing optimized data views for developers and end users. Sagent's tightly integrated development tools, repository and data mart server enables cohesive data views for end users and developers alike.

-- Integrating with Microsoft technologies. The Sagent Data Mart Solution also provides tight integration with Windows NT (client and server), Windows 95 (client), and Microsoft Office (client). All Sagent components are OCX/ActiveX-compliant, making them easy to "plug and play." Further, Sagent was recently selected as one of the first vendors to license Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications, which is used as Sagent's scripting language. Also, users may launch Sagent queries and searches from within Microsoft Excel, or have their "snaps" poured into Microsoft Word or PowerPoint.

High Performance

One of the chief architectural objectives of the Sagent Data Mart Solution is to deliver consistently high performance throughout each phase of the data mart process, including population, metadata creation, information access and sharing, and administration and management. This is done by:

-- Staging data efficiently and logically. Sagent places function-specific data on the same workgroup or department network as the users who need it and automatically caches frequently-used information on the local data mart for efficient reuse. It also enables users to store data results, called "snaps," on the server for reuse by other workgroup members. This eliminates redundant requests and analytical procedures, improving server and network performance.

-- Exploiting multi-threaded architectures. Sagent takes advantage of Windows NT's multi-threaded operating system by employing agent-based processing that enables multiple end-user requests to be processed simultaneously. This prevents a user's workstation from ever being tied up. Sagent further maximizes performance by splitting up a request for information into multiple, simple SQL queries, if appropriate, and splicing together the result set.

Extensibility Beyond SQL

The Sagent Data Mart Solution is a language-independent solution that enables organizations to extend the Sagent solution to include functionality beyond the capabilities of SQL, such as ranking and running averages. Using Sagent's Data Flow Plans, a request for information can be defined as a series of SQL statements and non-SQL transforms written in Sagent's scripting language -- Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications -- or Visual Basic, Delphi or C . This removes any barriers from delivering information to users due to the limitations of SQL.