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Two more players for "datamarts"

Hewlett-Packard and IBM roll out downsized versions of their own data warehousing tools, intended to cash in on the corporate trend toward building workgroup-sized information systems known as "datamarts."

Mike Ricciuti Staff writer, CNET News
Mike Ricciuti joined CNET in 1996. He is now CNET News' Boston-based executive editor and east coast bureau chief, serving as department editor for business technology and software covered by CNET News, Reviews, and Download.com. E-mail Mike.
Mike Ricciuti
Not to be outdone by Microsoft's workgroup data warehousing announcement earlier today, both Hewlett-Packard (HWP) and IBM (IBM) rolled out downsized versions of their own data warehousing tools, intended to cash in on the corporate trend toward building workgroup-sized information systems known as "datamarts."

Hewlett-Packard announced HP DataMart Manager, an administration tool for small- to medium-sized data warehouses. The tool lets administrators improve the performance of queries issued against databases. The tool examines summary tables, used by many data warehouses use to quickly calculate answers to complex queries, in order to speed up query responses.

The tool also advises database administrators on which summary tables should be recreated or deleted, based on usage patterns.

DataMart Manager is priced at $25,000 and runs on Unix, Windows 95, NT, OS/2, and Macintosh operating systems and works with Ingres, Sybase, Oracle, Red Brick, and Informix Software databases.

IBM rolled out a software bundle for building ready-to-use data warehouses on Microsoft's Windows NT. Visual Warehouse includes IBM's DB2 database server for Windows NT; Distributed Database Connection Services for Windows NT for managing multiple DB2 databases; a database cataloging tool called DataGuide; a single-user license for Lotus Approach to produce queries and charts based on DB2 data; and Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) drivers for Informix, Oracle, Sybase, and Microsoft SQL Server databases.

IBM said the bundle is in beta testing and will ship late this year. No pricing was announced.