Re: DBMS' and datawarehouse combinations. (Management and ad-hoc information)

F.J. VERDUIN wrote:
>
> I'm presently working with an insurance company in the Netherlands
> that's taking its first careful steps towards integrating the
> principle of datawarehousing in its information gathering proces.
> To realize this they regularily 'dump' a hefty chunk of their
> mainframe-data on a Sybase SQL server which is part of the PC-LAN
> through a TPC-IP protocol. The only way then to access this raw data
> is by means of their own DBMS -namely Access (2.0, Windows) or even
> Excell (4.0)- combined with an ODBC-driver to gain a little processing
> speed on the network.
 

> 1. I really need an DBMS alternative to Access 2.0.

The question I suggest you ask first is, do you want a database or an analysis tool. I seems to me that dupliating your Sybase data in a PC database, by definition, will always be slower, less robust, and painful. I would forget another database and look toward an ad-hoc query and reporting tool. PdoxWin is certainly a major improvement over Access just as Delphi is a huge improvement over Visual Basic but none of these will do what you need. I suggest that you take a serious look at Borland's R&R Report Writer, Crystal Reports, and other similar tools. You might also contact Oracle Corp. and see if their OLAP (on-line analytical processing) tool will work with your existing Sybase version.

> 2. I would like to discuss this idea with others, people who've
> thought of something similar, introduced a similar idea or are
> willing to ponder a bit on it.

I have done a lot of data warehouse work with SQL dataservers and would be glad to answer any questions you may have. Please make your questions as specific as possible.

Daniel Morgan
EXE Solutions
USA Received on Thu May 16 1996 - 00:00:00 CEST