Midrange Stuff, OS/400 Edition

OS/400 shops that have large amounts of data to load into multidimensional databases will benefit from the most recent release of ShowCase's Essbase. With Essbase 6.2, ShowCase is debuting multithreading for loading multidimensional databases, which will allow companies with multiprocessor AS/400 or iSeries servers to more easily take advantage of that horsepower for loading the data.

The enhancement comes courtesy of Hyperion Solutions, the original developers of the Essbase online analytical processing (OLAP) engine (OLAP and multidimensional database computing mean pretty much the same thing) and the company that ShowCase contracts with for the Essbase source code. As the deal works, ShowCase is entitled to all new versions of Essbase that Hyperion delivers, which ShowCase then ports from its Windows and Unix roots to run on the OS/400 platform. Hyperion issued its Essbase 6.2 release months ago, and ShowCase has just finished all the porting and testing to ensure it runs well on OS/400. ShowCase's Essbase 6.2 began shipping at the end of May.

Previous releases of ShowCase's Essbase didn't feature multithreading capabilities, which meant that if an OS/400 shop wanted to take advantage of its multiprocessor servers, it could, but it would have to split a unit of work into multiple jobs, which could then be run on separate processors. This was actually a more advanced capability than Unix and Windows users of Essbase received, said Kathy Konkel, ShowCase product manager for Essbase. By splitting the workload into different jobs, "We were actually able to take advantage of multiprocessing," she said. "We already had that capability to take advantage of it, because of the operating system. Windows NT didn't take advantage of it before. We kind of touted that as an advantage, running Essbase on the '400."

Now, with true multithreading for loading the data into the Essbase database, users will be able to run a single multidimensional databases load or refresh--which can take quite a bit of CPWs, depending on the size of the database--across multiple processors. Loading data and conducting refreshes of the data is only one of three major workload categories for Essbase. The other types of workloads are running calculations in the database and running user queries against the database. Hyperion has already introduced multithreading capabilities for the entire Essbase kernel in Essbase 6.5. ShowCase is currently working on porting Hyperion's Essbase 6.5 to OS/400 and should be ready to start shipping by early fall, Konkel said.

In addition to new parallel processing capabilities for loading the multidimensional database, ShowCase's Essbase 6.2 features other enhancements, including improved memory utilization and the capability to perform several types of calculations in different ways than previous releases allowed. There is also a new failsafe mechanism in Essbase 6.2 to prevent "queries from hell," or gigantic queries that may have been accidentally set off by users and that can consume enormous amounts of systems resources. There is also a new database update feature that doesn't require users to be kicked off the system to restart the system, which should cut down on the instances of database corruption.

The Essbase OLAP engine is a component of ShowCase's suite business intelligence software called Strategy, which is currently at the 4.5 release level, and is not available separately. However, ShowCase executives felt compelled to publicize the improvements made to Essbase as a way of reaffirming their belief that the core component of any business intelligence solution should be OLAP and multidimensional databases.

"For customers already invested in OLAP, pulling their data together with data mining is the next step," Konkel said. "With OLAP, if you know the question, you can typically get the answer. If you don't know the question, that's where data mining can help. Some will say you'll need one or the other. But you can get value out of both. Once you find the question, often you'll still use OLAP to monitor and to deliver the information."