Gartner Group questions OLAP Council's industry value.STAMFORD, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 10, 1995--On Jan. 9, 1995, Arbor Software See Hyperion. Corp. (Sunnyvale, Calif.), Comshare Inc. (Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, city (1990 pop. 109,592), seat of Washtenaw co., S Mich., on the Huron River; inc. 1851. It is a research and educational center, with a large number of government and industrial research and development firms, many in high-technology fields such as , Mich.), IRI Iri (ē`rē`), former city, North Jeolla (Cholla) prov., SW South Korea. An agricultural center and transportation hub, it was absorbed into Iksan. Software (Waltham, Mass.), and Pilot Software Inc. (Cambridge, Mass.) announced the formation of a cooperative entity called the OLAP Council (body, standard) OLAP Council - A body formed in early 1995 to work on a cross-product API for OLAP. After little success it was replaced by the Analytical Solutions Forum. . Positioning itself as a quasi-standards body, the council's mission is to "educate the market about on-line analytical processing (database) On-Line Analytical Processing - (OLAP) A category of database software which provides an interface such that users can transform or limit raw data according to user-defined or pre-defined functions, and quickly and interactively examine the results in various dimensions (OLAP (OnLine Analytical Processing) Decision support software that allows the user to quickly analyze information that has been summarized into multidimensional views and hierarchies. OLAP tools are used to perform trend analysis on sales and financial information. ) technology, provide common definitions, sponsor industry research and help position OLAP technology within the broader IT architecture." The OLAP Council has defined OLAP very narrowly -- limiting membership to vendors offering server-based multidimensional databases. Membership also excludes non-vendors completely. "While the council's mission seems to be to offer industry OLAP standards, we believe that it will serve to enforce its own brand of multidimensionality, and that it will be a self-serving marketing tool for its members," said Howard Dresner, research director at Gartner Group. The OLAP Council will not broaden its charter or evolve into a more open forum, and it will cease to exist once its parochial marketing mission has been completed in 1997, Gartner analysts predict. Clients looking at multidimensional technology for specific decision support applications should not consider the goals of the OLAP Council as part of their selection criteria. CONTACT: Gartner Group Kate Berg, 203/967-6793 |
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