BIGuru
Business Intelligence is the science and the art of converting data into information. Data visualization is an important component of this practice as a picture is still worth a thousand words. At a glance critical corporate information can be gleaned from a pie chart – information that would take much longer to analyze from a spreadsheet. The typical BI tool today generates such visualization parts server side and then pushes that component (pie chart, and bar chart, for example) to the client application or web browser. Although typically attractive these components are generally limited in their ability to create a rich user experience as pixilated images can act as presentation components only.
Chordial Solutions’ BIGuru system provides for a richer user experience by rendering graphical components using SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) technology that can mix with Javascript to create client side mouse over and click effects. Furthermore, using Ajax technology drill down can be achieved without a painful full page refresh. This results in a near client tool-like application all through the comfort of a browser. Tabbed panes are used to add a third dimension to web report pages, and a fully functional browser-based Query Generator allows an administrator to attach parameterized SQL lookups to each zone of the report page.
Although Chordial’s product offerings are out-of-the-box feature rich, the design approach has been to allow any development organization to extend the systems to meet particular needs that cannot be anticipated by a tool vendor. In this manner, for example, if there is a new zone type that needs to be used on a report page, then using any .NET language and conventional object oriented class inheritance and interface methodologies, BIGuru can be extended to meet custom requirements. This extensibility transcends the reporting functionality, and includes the metadata management and parameterized named query system that is used under the hood as well. It is Chordial’s view that the days of being locked into the version releases of a tools vendor are long gone, and that customers should be demanding open systems that can be extended by their internal staff. Thus the best of both worlds are achieved – feature rich offerings that can be easily extended.
Organizations are currently spending upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars or more to develop and maintain databases and report generators using current Business Intelligence tool vendor products. It is Chordial Solutions’ goal to provide a system that truly lends itself to Rapid Application Development (RAD) including integrating a web report page into their web site. Using our BIGuru system, browser-based BI products worth millions of dollars have been spun in under a week each.