Midrange Stuff, OS/400 Edition

IBM last week announced a new release of its business intelligence offering for the OS/400 platform. With DB2 OLAP Server for iSeries Version 8.1, IBM is delivering performance enhancements--including the capability to run part of a data cube on a relational database management system--for improved scalability. IBM says that, as a result of incorporating relational online analytical processing (ROLAP) capabilities, the product has changed from being a strictly multidimensional OLAP (MOLAP) application to a hybrid OLAP (HOLAP) application.

Incorporating integrated ROLAP functionalities into DB2 OLAP Server for iSeries gives application designers more flexibility to choose the right tools for building analytical programs, IBM says. MOLAP technology provides the capability to run sophisticated queries, but ROLAP technology provides better scalability. Previous releases of DB2 OLAP Server gave users the option of using either ROLAP or MOLAP techniques to build their data cube. But users could never use both techniques at the same time.

Now, with DB2 OLAP Server 8.1, application designers can use relational and multidimensional database-building techniques simultaneously, giving them the benefits of MOLAP's sophistication and ROLAP's scalability. With HOLAP software, only a small portion of the data cube needs to be loaded and precalculated, because the lower, more detailed levels of data can remain in a relational database and be accessed at runtime, with no deterioration in capabilities.

DB2 OLAP Server 8.1 is based on Hyperion Solutions' Essbase 6.5, delivered earlier this year. About two years ago, IBM entered into a complicated licensing agreement with Hyperion and ShowCase (which, years earlier, had purchased exclusive rights from Hyperion to port and distribute Essbase in the OS/400 marketplace), whereby ShowCase gave IBM some rights to distribute Essbase to the OS/400 market. In November 2000, IBM delivered the result of this agreement, DB2 OLAP Server for AS/400 Version 7.1, which was based on Essbase 6.0. DB2 OLAP Server for iSeries 8.1 is IBM's second delivery of Essbase technology to the OS/400 market. IBM also announced last week that it will stop selling DB2 OLAP Server for AS/400 7.1 on February 12, 2003, with support ending September 30, 2003.

Essbase 6.5, and hence DB2 OLAP Server for iSeries 8.1, features other performance improvements as well, including support for multithreading. Multithreading improves the product's system performance and throughput by allowing an operation to be broken down into multiple tasks and executed on separate processors in parallel. Essbase supports multithreading for data calculations, data loads, and data export tasks.

DB2 OLAP Integration Server, which is used to load data into the OLAP Server engine, has also been improved. With this latest release, DB2 OLAP Integration Server supports more varied data sources, giving users the flexibility to create OLAP models from multiple data sources. DB2 OLAP Server for iSeries 8.1 also includes DB2 OLAP Server Miner, which saves users time by automatically finding atypical or deviant values in OLAP results.

DB2 OLAP Server for iSeries 8.1 began shipping last Friday. Client interfaces developed for the previous version of this product, DB2 OLAP Server for AS/400 7.1, are supported with Version 8.1, IBM says. For more information, read IBM's software announcement letter.

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