| 1. What are the benefits of using meta5
as compared with other Business Intelligence tools? |
| Meta5 provides users with a rapid application development
environment for constructing business intelligence solutions at the
application level. These solutions can access data from any data source
and distribute the results to a multitude of formats, platforms and
notification systems, such as Excel, Word, email, and the Web. Meta5 allows
business analysts to utilize these systems from standard business intelligence
portals such as the Web and Lotus Notes. |
| 2. What is it about meta5 that gives it the ability to solve the most difficult
business problems that the other BI tools can't handle? |
| Meta5 is not a stand alone solution or system. Meta5
is committed towards integrating the best of breed solutions that
exist in today's market place. Our 5th generation programming environment
was designed to initiate, launch and integrate other Windows based
applications into our own rich development environment to complement
and augment our functionality where needed. Using this philosophy
towards problem solving, we can easily augment any application with
benefits that may be found in other products. |
| 3. Can I run reports and query the database
through the web? |
| Yes, meta5 has a component called Open Data Access
Services (ODAS), which allows you to run applications and get results
from the Web, Lotus Notes or customized Visual Basic applications. Our
new Portal Server makes it even easier publish and manage reports on the
Web. The meta5 system can be "transparent" in the sense that
an analyst can access the application through these clients and retrieve
reports without even knowing that the meta5 system is operating in
the background. This positions meta5 as the perfect BI portal application
engine. |
| 4. Is there a way to deploy reports to remote
users through the web, pagers and mobile phones? |
Yes. With meta5, you can broadcast
emailed reports and "paged messages" that signal certain
triggers such as "Sales for XYZ fell by 25% in the last quarter
". Your managers can be kept informed while on the road and away
from the home office. When integrated with a supply chain management
system, meta5 can send broadcast requests to your partners informing
them that "inventory levels for ABC decreased 45% in the last
week, we may need to send in an emergency purchase order ".
Basically, using any web enabled device, meta5 can keep your user
community informed of any changes or anomalies in your data, moving
you towards what are called "pro-active applications". |
| 5. Can I access and combine information
from multiple databases in an application? |
| Yes, meta5 gives you the capability of accessing
multiple databases or data sources from one application. Tools or
Icons can be configured that point to these data sources. These tools
may then be copied and given to the appropriate users to develop their
own applications. Meta5 supports the joining of these disparate (relational,
non-relational) data sources at the application level, giving us a
distinct advantage over other BI tools. |
| 6. What type of application development
and data manipulation can I do in the meta5 environment that is not
possible with other BI tools? |
While other business intelligence tools require
a certain type of schema to generate the components for a report,
meta5 is not constrained by restrictive schema designs. The system
allows users to create their own multidimensional reports by accessing
and utilizing any part of the database and multiple data sources.
For example, one can take a sales list from a third party vendor,
and join it back to data from the warehouse to create a combined report
with more detailed information than in the corporate internal data
store. We recognize the fact that not every piece of critical information
can arrive at the data warehouse in a timely fashion. In order to
solve business problems today we have the ability at the application
level to solve the most critical and difficult business problems now.
This gives us the distinct advantage of being able to react today
to your critical business problems without having to wait for your
corporate data warehouse to be totally comprehensive. |
| 7. If my data warehouse is operational and
completed what benefits can I expect from meta5? What would meta5
allow me to do in addition to another BI tool? |
Meta5 has its own unique and rich data analysis
tool set that can take advantage of the benefits of Star schema designs.
Our OLAP-Reporter tool allows users to intuitively select Fact and
Dimensions required for their report and drill down to various levels
of data. Our Query tool defined many concepts of how query tools are
used today and continues to be one of the best tools in the industry.
We recognize that in the real world performance issues always creep
up that require specialized consideration. With the use of our SQL
tool we can give the power user a programmatic development environment
that will allow them to solve the complex performance issues facing
them today. All too often, we have found customers that have rolled
out elaborate BI/DW with high expectations only to find that in the
real world their BI tool could not adjust to the nuances needed to
obtain adequate performance.
The SQL tool can also be used to create intermediate table staging
areas for multi-pass SQL. Our uses of the SQL tool in conjunction
with our 5th generation capsule environment have proven to be one
of the best data mart and application creation engines in the
industry.
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