Symtrax Delivers 'Dashboard' Reporting Solution for iSeries

Published: January 31, 2006

by Alex Woodie

Symtrax is gearing up to start selling two new products this year, including Dashboard, a new Web-based analysis and report distribution tool for iSeries and other servers, and MapForm, a spool file overlay product. These products are key to the company's hopes for 2006, a year that will mark the transformation from older reporting solutions to a new generation of products.

Symtrax has been serving the business intelligence and report distribution needs of iSeries shops for more than a decade. Officials with the company, which is based in France and has U.S. headquarters in Los Angeles, say iSeries and AS/400 shops make up 90 percent of the company's customers, and the company is focused on delivering OS/400 solutions. However, like many small ISVs these days, Symtrax has felt the pressure to go multiplatform, which it has done with the latest generation of products.

On the business intelligence side of the house, Symtrax has been transitioning customers from its XL400 software, a Query/400 replacement product that enables people to use Excel to view OS/400 data, to StarQuery, a more powerful multiplatform query tool.

StarQuery was introduced at version 1.0 in 2003 as an easy-to-use reporting solution that would allow non-technical personnel to create their own reports. Symtrax believed that, by guiding users through the process of creating reports and using a drag-and-drop process to select database fields, add dimensions, and perform calculations--as opposed to manually writing queries in SQL--that it would put more power in the hands of decision makers, while simultaneously freeing up IT professionals' time for tougher projects.

Symtrax shipped a second version of its Windows-based StarQuery less than a year ago that included additional distribution options, including pushing reports in PDF, Excel, HTML, and XML formats via FTP, e-mail, or HTTP (see "Symtrax Adds Automation to StarQuery Reporting Tool"). The first version only supported e-mail distribution as an out-of-the-box distribution option.

Now, Symtrax has a new offering called Dashboard that combines StarQuery with WebReports, a Windows-based product that, as its name suggests, is used to publish reports on the Web, along with some extra code bridging the two products together. Dashboard will enable users to log on to their company's Web site and view reports through a browser. And because the StarQuery portion of the package automatically updates the reports according to a pre-set schedule (for example, an hourly or daily basis), users won't have to worry about having the latest versions of reports. It also includes security features to prevent users from viewing reports they're not authorized to see.

StarQuery (and therefore Dashboard) supports DB2/400 and all other major databases, and requires a Windows workstation for creating reports. The Dashboard bundle costs $9,500, while users can get WebReports alone for about $6,500.

Symtrax is also gearing up this month to sell its new MapForm solution, which it officially unveiled in October. MapForm transforms spool file output from iSeries and other sources into graphical reports by applying graphical overlays to the raw data. The software outputs documents in two formats, including PDF for ease of distribution, and TIFs for long-term archiving, and uses a Windows program for drag-and-drop forms design.

MapForm works with multiple platforms, and is aimed at replacing pre-printed forms used for business correspondence, such as invoices, checks, purchase orders, and delivery slips. The software can also be integrated with an e-mail server and configured to automatically send documents via e-mail as soon as they're generated by the server. For long-term archiving, Symtrax recommends integrating MapForm with WebReports.

Symtrax has offered an array of spool file management products before MapForm, including Cardinal and Compleo. At this point, it looks like MapForm will be the go-to product serving the majority of its clients multi-platform document needs. However, it doesn't completely replace Compleo, an OS/400-specific program that will remain a core offering in the Symtrax arsenal, says Michael Waldron, the company's spokesman.

MapForm is available now for a flat rate of $2,900. For more information, visit www.symtrax.com.