Symtrax Goes In-Memory with StarQuery BI Solution

September 27, 2011 Alex Woodie

Symtrax yesterday unveiled a new version of StarQuery, its business intelligence software that’s often used in IBM i environments. StarQuery version 4 introduces two big features, including in-memory processing for faster report retrieval, and the capability to retrieve data from multiple databases at the same time.

StarQuery is a Microsoft Windows-based BI tool unveiled by Symtrax in late 2003 as a replacement for its XL400 product. The core components of the StarQuery suite include a data mapping engine called MapDesigner that’s used to create user-specific views of a database (DB2/400 quite often); a runtime component and multi-dimensional database; an Excel plug-in called StarQuery for Excel; and an online reporting solution called StarQuery for the Web. Additional modules provide scheduling capabilities and support for the Open Office spreadsheet.

The launch of StarQuery 4.0 delivers a big enhancement to the StarQuery runtime, which does the grunt work of grabbing the latest data and assembling the reports according to the definitions set using MapDesigner. A new in-memory processing capability should allow the runtime to generate finished reports much faster than if it were relying only on data stored on disk.

The capability to combine data from multiple databases into a single report will also help users, says Symtrax CEO Bernard Aldebert. “Our clients asked us for an easier way to combine data from multiple databases into real-time reports and we responded with StarQuery 4.0,” he states in a press release.