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

Greetings,

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. This method is hardly optimal, but the only thing they have at the moment.

The only real advantages, however, seem to be in answering the on-the-fly or ad-hoc questions though the tools are frequently used to create management information. This takes a lot of time to do, and people end up doing more 'cutting-and-pasting' than the actual running of queries do. And those take forever at times.

My view on this is that it should be possible to use this data-store in another way, by combining the use of pre-programmed queries and a GUI to create an all-round management information system, reporting (monthly?) changes in premiums, damages and the like (off hand, but the items are too divers to fully describe here)

One of the major drawback, besides convincing my boss and the people who're doing the job manually now, is processing time. Programming isn't the problem, but the time it takes Access 2.0 to sieve through the data on the Sybase is a real pain.

So, my questions:

1. I really need an DBMS alternative to Access 2.0, something that's not *too* expensive but cuts processing time by a reasonable amount. I was thinking about a system with a native Sybase-driver myself, but anyone with a suggestion/opinion and/or experience is welcome to share it. My own experience with other DBM-programs is negligable.
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.

Anyone?

Reactions are welcome at : F.J.Verduin_at_kub.nl

Frits Verduin
The Netherlands Received on Tue May 07 1996 - 00:00:00 CEST