BI/Suite Is Something to Chirp About

ENT, March 26, 2001 by Jeff Bankston

We've been told all along that technology is working for us, but sometimes it feels like we're working for the technology. Once in a while, though, we run across a superb set of tools that makes having these technological devices downright worthwhile. The 7.0 version of BI/Suite from Hummingbird is such a tool. The software takes a data repository and allows the user to create a business model of that data, which helps executives make better-informed business decisions.

Hummingbird's BI/Suite is a powerful enterprise query and reporting solution. It allows users to access and analyze information stored in transactional databases, data marts, data warehouses, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications on the desktop and over the Web. BI/Suite helps users better understand their businesses by asking questions about the information in their enterprises and analyzing the answers for more effective decision making.

The suite of tools consists of a few different parts. BI/Broker is the server that ties into the main data repository. BI/Broker can access hyper cubes, OLAP, Oracle, Microsoft OLE DB, and ODBC-compatible data sources. It also provides for user and group security, scheduling and automation of tasks, and load balancing between multiple BI/Broker servers in large enterprises. BI/Query is used to create queries upon the data source, then the results are used to create record sets for the next part of the suite, BI/Analyze. This third product is used to build the presentation of the data into a form usable for decision-making executives.

BI/Suite security services are called Hummingbird CAP (Common Authentication Protocol). CAP is a secure, single, unified, common view that consolidates Windows NT, LDAP, Network Information Services, Active Directory, Novell Directory Services, and native Unix accounts. It is a common service shared among other Hummingbird applications, such as Hummingbird EIP, to allow single-logon.

Our test server was a dual-processor Intel Pentium 233 MMX department server armed with 256 MB of memory and 10 GB of disk space. The main enterprise server is a 733-MHz Intel Pentium III server with 145 GB of disk space, 384 MB of RAM, and four network interfaces hosted on a Cisco-switched Fast Ethernet backbone. We did not need a Web server installed since the suite comes with its own tools for Web publishing.

The suite was installed twice - once on the slower server, and then on the newer Pentium III -- so we could see the difference in performance. Obviously, the faster the better, but we had great results on the slower server as well. It should be noted that as you stretch usage of BI/Suite in an enterprise environment, you'll need servers capable of such an environment. Optimally, we found BI/Broker should be on its own Pentium III server of 733-MHz or higher power with 384 MB of memory or more. BI/Query and BI/Analyze can run from any PC or laptop with at least 128 MB of memory and a 400-MHz Pentium II or higher for the best results. Your mileage may vary.

In our test bed, we installed all three facets of the suite on one server that was capable of supporting all three products simultaneously. In a production environment, we found BI/Broker should be on its own dedicated server for performance reasons. For larger systems, we believe additional BI/Broker servers might be necessary. Contacting Hummingbird beforehand would confirm or deny this requirement.

The first part of our test focused on selecting a data source for the query. If you think along the lines of Microsoft's Access databases, you'll have this down pat. You need to create the query to gather data for the forms and reports. You may need to create an ODBC connector to the data source before you can proceed.

Point-and-click makes it easy to create simple queries. Once done, you'll create reports needed for the final presentation. It is possible to create different reports from the same query, because you may find the data more presentable if formatted differently. BI/Query and BI/Analyze both have such flexibility and power that it doesn't require a programmer or database administrator to set this up.

Although it was a simple report, we extended the testing to create more complex queries on the same data, and then on Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 ODBC sources. We created both simple and complex presentations for our Web users without problems. We were pleasantly surprised at how easy this was to do, as well as the Web security provided to the clients. While it is important to make these presentations available on the Web, security is more important, and BI/Suite gave us that security.

Finally, the depth and breadth of the reporting is made even easier with wizards and canned reporting methods. We were pleased to see that novices could get this product up and running in very little time. The suite's manuals are among the few that we've seen that actually made sense and are well-organized for this type of business intelligence environment.