Leading companies collaborate on new standard for data analysis

Most non-technical people these days understand the concept of a database. They might not know how it works, or how to get more than basic functionality out of it, but they know that it can be the most efficient way of storing, organising and managing information. What many people might not know is that increasingly there’s another component in the IT architecture that can add extra value to information held in a database.

OLAP, which is short for Online Analytical Processing, is a set of software tools that allows companies to perform a relatively complex analysis of corporate data in order to make better business decisions.

Sitting between the database management software and the client, the OLAP server is one of the main components of OLAP, and it provides special functions for applying a range of high-end analytical operations. These operations are utilised in many e-business tools ranging from customer relationship management (CRM) to enterprise resource planning (ERP). In CRM applications, for example, it is this high-end analysis from an OLAP server that might allow you to pick obscure trends, such as: 25 year old males who bank predominantly online are more likely to pay higher car insurance premiums due to previous accidents.

But one problem that has dogged software developers and companies implementing their solutions is that there has been no standard application programming interface (API) for connecting e-business tools to OLAP servers. Most of the APIs to date have been vendor proprietary, but a new Java based API is in the works that promises to set the standard for creating business analysis applications that can be deployed across any data source compliant with the new standard. In addition, OLAP servers supporting the new Java OLAP (JOLAP) standard will be compatible with a wide range of applications and components running on the popular Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE).

Not surprisingly for a Java standard, it has the support of Sun Microsystems – the original developer of the cross-platform programming language. But the JOLAP initiative was first proposed by Hyperion, a vendor of business analysis applications. Also collaborating in the expert group developing the standard are IBM, Oracle, Nokia, Internetivity, Painted Word, SAS Institute and Unisys.

“The interdependency of e-business and analytic applications heightens the urgency and significance of providing the Java technology development community with a simple, pervasive mechanism to work with OLAP data structures,” says Mitch Kramer of the Patricia Seybold Group. “Broad support … among leading e-business and data warehousing vendors is a positive and timely development in the evolution of the Internet economy.”

Among the advantages this development will bring to companies are a wider range of business analysis applications to choose from, speedier implementation and the fact that Java programming is becoming an increasingly common skill among IT staff.