James F. Koopmann Reviews DBxtra Reporting and Query Tool
Database guru James F. Koopmann reviews the DBxtra ad hoc reporting and query tool.
(PRWEB) April 27, 2005 -- DBxtra is a powerful query and reporting tool that
hides many of the complexity and technical expertise required for creating
connections to disperse data sources, building queries, designing reports, and
delivery information throughout an enterprise or to your customer
base.
With the ability to connect to multiple databases or data sources
at the same time, DBxtra allows for cross platform data aggregation and the
ability to answer questions that would typically take IT time to migrate data
into a single reporting database. Through powerful query and filtering
mechanisms users have the ability to browse and achieve fine grained retrieval
of data to answer detailed business questions.
DBxtra uses a project
level approach and Explorer type tree structure to categorize database and
DBxtra objects that facilitates the production queries and reports. This
explorer tree structure drastically improves the reusability of objects, speed
in access to information, and reduces the man-hours required to design and
produce subsequent reports.
The production of reports can be produced in
a variety of formats including HTML, Microsoft Excel, CSV, XML, or PDF with the
option to be merged into personalized E-mails. Also available is a visual report
designer where your choice of formatting options can be employed to produce just
the right look for your report.
DBxtra comes very close to their goal of
“no programming or database knowledge required”. All the while creating a new
breed of power end-users.
Getting familiar with DBxtra
How a product
“feels” is always a big concern when delivering a product that will actually
improve the productivity of end users and reduce the burden on IT. I personally
like to try a product without reading the documentation. While I have years of
experience as a DBA, analyst, developer, and data modeler I honestly try to
block all that information out of my mind to “feel” what it would be like to
operate under limited expectations. The only mind-block I needed to get over was
double clicking on objects to activate their usage. Honestly if I would have
read the help on the top and bottom of the screens this could have been
eliminated.
DBxtra has a very nice step by step approach, almost like an
Install Shield approach, that drives you through creation of queries and
reports. Once getting use to clicking through this stepwise approach I was
building queries and reports quicker than I could think of examples to model.
All of which I didn’t need to know anything about data models other than
identification of which database my tables where. The only database modeling
concepts that end users need to understand are tables, columns, joins, filters,
sorting, and aggregate functions. All of which are very teachable and most end
users understand a large subset of these concepts.
DBxtra comes with a
load of documentation including tutorials and video streams. All of which are
very helpful and will walk you through the major features of this product. I
watched all the tutorial videos and picked up some valuable hints on how to use
the product. It is very unusual for vendors to go to this length to educate
their end users. I read this as a true commitment on the vendor’s side to make
sure you are able to use the product and it not to become shelf-ware. Very
admirable!
Another training aid is the shipment of a sample data source,
with queries, reports, and schedules. This allows you to quickly dive into the
product and get a good feel for the product without ever touching your data
sources. Of course you will eventually want to produce some queries and reports
against your databases as there is nothing better for determining the
effectiveness and usefulness than seeing your own data.
Problems Solved
Can your end users get to the data they need? How often do they need to wait
for a developer to provide assistance in the extraction of vital information? It
does not matter if you are part of the executive team or an end user. Often
times when you want to get to information from a database or restricted system
you need to request work to be done on your behalf. You are at the mercy of your
IT staff and in particular developers, data analysts, data
administrators.
With DBxtra end users are liberated from the
ever-increasing queue that is experienced every time they need IT staff to
produce reports or extract data. DBxtra allows users to access multiple data
sources in disperse database systems and pull information from these sources in
a systematic pint and click fashion. The ease in which it is to produce reports,
and more importantly alter reports when business rules change, will have a
drastic impact and increased productivity for your end users while also reducing
the burden on IT.
Since DBxtra can connect to most any database or data
source, you can provide a tool the is truly cross-platform independent. This
actually reduces the toolset required, provides a single access point to data,
and reduces training requirements.
Who should use it
Anyone who
wants to produce quality reports or just query data in an ad hoc manor can
benefit from DBxtra. With a powerful toolset DBxtra assists end users as well as
the IT staff. in the categorization and processes around defining where
information is, how it is retrieved, and who needs the information. Developers,
analysts, and DBAs will benefit from this tool as they interrogate data across
multiple systems.
Working with DBxtra
Below is presented with my
experiences working with the DBxtra product. While the demos and tutorials take
you through many of the feature set it is highly recommended you use the product
to see how it works in your environment.
When you first start up DBxtra
you are prompted to accept the license agreement and then need to create a
DBxtra database for housing reports. Within the directory you supply to house
the DBxtra database a new directory will be created along with a .mdb (Microsoft
database) file. While using DBxtra additional directories and files may be
created in this directory. I was then prompted to create an administrator
password for the Microsoft database and then required to login. These few setup
procedures and only need to be done once and were not time intensive.
All work is done through projects and you will need to create one before
producing any report or querying any data. After you have defined a project you
can define the connections to databases and add database objects to use within
the newly created project. I was very happy to experience an error free
mechanism for creating connections to Oracle, SQL Server, and Microsoft Excel.
After defining a project and adding database objects to it you are then
put into the Data Explorer. The Data Explorer is the heart of the organizational
system for DBxtra where you access and place objects such as database objects,
reports, and queries. Data Explorer is a tree structure that, as you get
familiar with the toolset, allows for easy retrieval and quick access to
previously defined objects. At this point it is a nice place to click the “Show
Data” option and prove to yourself the ease at which DBxtra can extract
information from different data sources. You may also at this point get familiar
with one of the more powerful filtering mechanism through the “Show field
values” option. With this feature you can extract values for an object that can
be used in equality matches on columns. Just click the “Show field values” box,
select a field for the equality operation, and magically you can use the drop
down list and assign a value for the equality. Powerful and very user-friendly.
Now just hit the “Show Data” button to return the filtered result
set.
Query Builder allows for the definition and saving of queries within
the Data Explorer tree structure. Defining a query is accomplished through
naming the query, selecting data sources, selecting objects for the query,
building relationship and filters where necessary, and then possibly sorting the
data. As you use DBxtra you will soon notice that tabs across the top of the
screens present the order in which you should follow. It is an easy approach to
define the object or procedure you are building and very intuitive at the same
time. I personally like things that have a definite flow and DBxtra provides
that for me.
Building reports where again just as easy. Just follow the
script presented in the tabs on the screen. Reports have the ability to be
exported to text, XML, PDF, Microsoft Excel, and HTML. A unique feature of the
DBxtra is to export the report to a Microsoft Excel pivot table and chart where
the Excel spreadsheet is pre-built with a constant connection to the data
sources. Whenever the database is updated and the user of the Excel report
presses the refresh button the data in the spreadsheet is also updated.
Other options that I did not try were the E-mailing and scheduling of
reports. I did watch the demos and looked at the screens. Again the common
thread of the step by step tabular approach existed in these options and thus
presented no surprises. An interesting feature was the ability to write a simple
e-mail merge operation that allows for the sending of a report in an email while
tailoring the e-mail on merge fields for personalization.
Hardware /
Software Requirements
- Processor 600Mhz
- 128 MB RAM
- 25 MB available
space on hard disk drive
- Microsoft Windows 98 SE or later
- Microsoft
Excel 97 & Outlook 97 for higher level features
Download and
Installation
You can get a free 15 day trial off DBxta’s web site at http://www.DBxtra.com/DBxtra/registro.asp If you would like to
keep in touch with DBxtra and receive some free support and other valuable
information about using the product while you are in trial then you should give
them your name. But name registration is not required for the free trial. As an
interesting feature to the download, if you decide to not purchase by the end of
the trial the product deprecates itself from the Professional Edition into the
Free Edition. I have never seen this before and like the concept because you
don’t need to worry about removing the product. Plus at the end of the trial you
still have a product that is usable. The download and installation went very
swiftly with a clean and very few clicks to install the software.
License
There are three distinct products for DBxtra that include a
standard, professional, and report viewer. After a trial period of 15 days the
product deprecates to a free version. Pricing is currently available for a
single concurrent user and you are given price breaks as the number of
concurrent users increase. This ranges from around 25%-33% depending on how many
licenses you buy. Also to note is that the license is for concurrent users and
not for installed copies of DBxtra. This means that you can install everywhere
and use where you like. The pricing is very reasonable in my opinion and
depending on the number of licenses you purchase you can put the power of data
extraction into end users for less than $150 USD. Support is free as are
upgrades for year 2005.
Corporate Profile
Quanticus S.A. de C.V. is a
software developer located in Querétaro, México.
They have more then 10 years
experience in developing database software tools and ERP software for the small
and medium sized company.
The staff includes 4 administrative, 8 sales, 6
support and 12 developers people.
The company was established about 4 years
ago.
The product DBxtra was first released November 2004.
Morelos
166B
Col. Centro
Querétaro, Qro. C.P. 76000
México
Tel.: +52 (442)
215 44 96
USA: (201) 399 22 18
# # #
Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/4/prweb233324.htm