iSeries Shops Have Choices for Business Intelligence Tools

Published: November 14, 2006

by Alex Woodie

One of the benefits of implementing enterprise software on i5/OS and DB2/400 is the capability to sift through gigabytes of standardized data to find something about the business that wasn't known before. Whether it's basic green-screen queries, Web-based dashboards and KPIs, multidimensional databases and OLAP, or data mining, iSeries customers have an array of business intelligence tools at their disposal. And while IBM suggests leaving the data in DB2/400, Big Blue recognizes that good tools exist on other platforms, too.

Doug Mack, DB2 product marketing manager for System i, says i5/OS shops have used pretty much every business intelligence tool under the sun. "It's a constant conversation, what tooling is out there to support an i5/OS DB2 data warehouse," he says. "The System i Tools Network points to those i5/OS-friendly tool vendors. [But] we have many, many customer who have chosen to use just about any tool option available on the marketplace."

And from the sound of it, they're using those tools successfully, even if they don't run on i5/OS. With the exception of SPSS, the big "open system" business intelligence tool vendors--companies like Business Objects, Cognos, Hyperion-Brio, Informatica, and Microstrategy--target Unix or Windows environments for their data manipulation tools. SPSS, which has a deal with Hyperion to sell a version of its Essbase online analytical processing (OLAP) software that it ports to i5/OS, is pretty much the only big business intelligence vendor to target an i5/OS runtime, although Information Builders does offer a Java-based reporting tool called Web Focus that some iSeries shops are running on their iSeries machines.

"While we definitely have customers that think having a Unix or Windows tier is a negative, we think it's sometimes OK" to run open system tools against i5/OS, Mack says. "If you look at the open system tool vendors, while they use Unix or Windows for data manipulation, query, or report casting, they can still leverage DB2 for i5/OS."

Where the tools and data reside is becoming more important as iSeries shops roll out new business intelligence projects. "We've absolutely seen a resurgence in business intelligence and data warehousing," Mack says. "We're seeing a lot of customers interested [in new technologies], and evolving what they may have implemented before into dashboards, KPIs [key performance indicators] and corporate performance measurement [CPM]."

In many cases, the customers are moving up from simple report writing--most likely using the old Query/400 tool IBM includes with its i5/OS software stack--toward implementing an informational data store or a data warehouse, Mack says. KPIs, dashboards, and graphical analysis typically require a Web or a Windows front-end.

In many cases, i5/OS shops are moving the entire business intelligence environment to a Windows environment, including Microsoft's SQL Server database environment. In these situations, the data is moved from DB2/400 to SQL Server, where it is prepared for analysis with Windows tools. Vendors such as Q4bis and QlikTech are enjoying success in the i5/OS market using this technique.

While this approach might yield faster results, IBM recommends keeping data in i5/OS and its integrated database, which is officially called DB2 for i5/OS (but still colloquially known by many as DB2/400). "We tend to say that leaving information in DB2 has more value to you," Mack says. The reasoning has to do with maintaining the integrity of the data itself, as well as the metadata that surrounds it in DB2/400.

"If you can build the right infrastructure from an IT perspective, the tool doesn't matter," Mack says. However, if you buy a tool that forces an infrastructure on you, you could be facing the "sudden loss of integrity of the data," he says. That can be a very difficult place to recover from.

Among i5/OS shops, 90 percent of these users' data resides within DB2/400, Mack says. In many cases, moving this source data around to other platforms and programs (especially spreadsheets) can hurt data accuracy, reliability, and security. That's why Mack recommends leaving the data in DB2/400, but accessing the data with the users' choice of tools (which could run on any platform), via SQL.

Customers that want to keep their data manipulation tools on i5/OS have options, too. In fact, last year IBM added a new category to its Tools Innovation program dedicated to business intelligence software that runs under i5/OS. Here you will find vendors such as Coglin Mill, which develops a powerful and native extract, transform, and load (ETL) tool for i5/OS; New Generation Software, which offers an array of ad hoc query, report writing, data warehousing, and OLAP applications for i5/OS; Advanced Systems Concepts (since acquired by Help/Systems), which develops the multitalented SEQUEL suite; Business Computer Design with its new Clover graphical reporting tool; and Symtrax, which has been selling its StarQuery tool for the last few years. You can access the entire Tool Innovation program list at www-304.ibm.com/jct09002c/partnerworld/wps/pub/systems/i/technical/iii/tools_roadmap?gcLang=en.

IBM is happy with this line-up of i5/OS business intelligence tools and providers, and plans to continue to rely on them for tooling. "Query/400 was a great tool for its time. But there are more modern ways" of building reports, Mack says. "Today, it's a partner-provided mechanism. The tool providers do a good job already."

There is a broad range of i5/OS business intelligence tools, and the vendors target different types of companies. "NGS and ASC have done a good job marketing their products to the low end, while SPSS and Coglin Mill probably are geared more toward larger customers with more sophisticated data analysis needs," Mack says. "Probably the two big open system tools for ETL are Informatica's [Power Center] and IBM's Data Stage."

IBM, for its part, plans to continue to build new capabilities into DB2/400 to support its customers' business intelligence needs. "Our philosophy is to supply the plumbing," Mack says. "We've been trying to crank up the capabilities in DB2 for i5/OS for those workloads."

Unfortunately, some of that technological plumbing goes unnoticed, Mack says. "Some of the cool stuff that's in there can be overlooked," he says, naming database parallelism, encoded vector indexing, and the On Demand Performance Center. For a full review of DB2/400 goodies in i5/OS V5R4, check out the PDF at www-03.ibm.com/servers/eserver/iseries/db2/pdf/DB2V5R4summary.pdf.

The increased focus on plumbing became evident about a year ago, when IBM decided to stop selling a multidimensional database for the platform, called DB2 OLAP Server (actually a rebranded version of SPSS' i5/OS port of Hyperion's Essbase software). Support for DB2 OLAP Server will cease at the end of January 2007. But that doesn't mean IBM doesn't sell any business intelligence tools. The company's Java-based Alphablox software, which it acquired in 2005, is seeing some action on i5/OS servers, Mack says.

In recent years, a big gap in i5/OS business intelligence capabilities was filled when SPSS ported its data mining and predictive analysis product, called Clementine, to run under i5/OS via the PASE AIX runtime. "Customers that have used the technology have gotten unbelievable results from it," Mack says. The tool is particularly useful for sifting through data about customers to help companies identify potential prospects, to perform customer "churn" analysis, and for risk and fraud detection. "The predictive analysis is really, really powerful. I think it's going to see more usage," Mack says.

While the i5/OS platform is never going to be the end-all, be-all business intelligence platform, and will almost certainly require Unix or Windows tiers for certain functions, the good news is that there is a good variety of tools available to help companies leverage their i5/OS data.

Mack, who deals primarily in business intelligence issues, sees the i5/OS business intelligence story evolving along similar lines as i5/OS high availability, particularly when it comes to utilizing excess capacity.

"One of the huge benefit of the high availability and disaster recovery software is they're making near real-time copies of the data to the second system, and generally that second system is sitting there idle," he says. "I think we need to do a better job of making people aware of the second benefit of high availability software--the built-in operational data store."