Geo Business Intelligence with EXASolution 4.0

• Integration of geodata empowers spatial ad-hoc analysis • Generic loading interface: EXASOL high performance database now integrates even easier with heterogeneous IT systems

Nuremberg, Germany, November 7, 2011 – EXASolution version 4.0 is now available and for the first time allows for storing and analyzing geographic information. This way, complex data can be integrated quickly into an easily comprehensible spatial context. Customers who opt for EXASolution as the basis Data Warehouse are now able to use this additional analytic dimension for more efficient evaluations, which translates into a clear cutting edge – such in geomarketing.

With version 4.0 EXASOL also complement their database, which is based on in-memory technology, by a generic Java database connectivity (JDBC) loading interface. This makes EXASolution the first database in the market that connects directly to external databases, this way saving time and money.

Spatial reference for business intelligence applications

EXASolution 4.0 empowers Geo Business Intelligence through the integration of geodata. With these new features, companies will open a new data analysis and visualization dimension for analytics, reporting, data integration and data organization. In addition, the interaction between their BI applications and EXASolution provides a powerful communication tool: classic elements of visualization, such as spreadsheets, charts or traffic lights, can now be completed by maps in reports, dashboards or cockpits. These provide an intuitive and user-friendly navigation level through data and allow for a quick spatial situation analysis.  Such spatial ad-hoc queries are used in geomarketing where localized customer, location and market analyses are carried out.

Generic loading interface for optimum data quality as well as time and cost savings

Thanks to the JDBC Connection, EXASolution 4.0 is the only database in the market that connects directly to external databases, such as Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, MySql or Postgres. This allows for an easy file import and export without any quality loss. This not only renders the expenses for ETL tools obsolete, but also the administrative effort of adapting individual interfaces.

“Big Data and the complex challenges of growing data volumes are part of our roadmap. By integrating geodata into the analysis, EXASolution 4.0 takes a great step because only by evaluating the spatial reference, our customers will get a comprehensive view of their company, and thus, competent answers to all their business questions“, says Steffen Weissbarth, CEO of EXASOL AG. „With the new and optimized features in version 4.0, our customers do not only benefit from our in-memory technology, but also from the additional dimension in data analysis. This way, they lay the foundations for real-time business processes, and they will be able to respond more flexibly to future challenges while further reducing their total cost of ownership.”

Key features in EXASolution 4.0:

• Performance improvement for Many-Core architectures: New, internal parallelization makes optimum use of HW, even with very many cores.
• The OLAP function „GROUPING SETS“ (including the CUBE and ROLLUP constructs) for calculating hierarchical aggregations was implemented.
• Autoincrement columns (=Identity columns): Customers can have the system generate ascending Ids automatically.
• Text storage was expanded to 2 million characters.
• Import and export commands support the new option TRIM (LTRIM/RTRIM) in order to be able to specify the reading of spaces into strings.
• EXASolution 4.0 supports constraints (NOT NULL, Primary Key, Foreign Key) for an automatic consistency check.
• Optimized SQL frontend EXAplus. Among other things, SQL templates, autocompletion, bookmarks, print function, import/export dialogues for tables and the links from the log window to the corresponding SQL statements were improved or implemented.
• Easier privileging through scheme-wide privileges.

A detailed product description is available here.

EXASOL AG develops and distributes the EXASolution high performance database which is based on in-memory technology and which was specifically designed for enterprise warehouse applications and business intelligence solutions. It allows for analyzing and evaluating very large data quantities very quickly. Thanks to its high performance and low administration effort, EXASolution not only helps organizations to generate valuable fundamental decisions from their data, but also in reducing the total cost of ownership. Just in April this year, Gartner recognized EXASOL “Cool Vendor” in the Data Management and Integration category 2011. EXASolution 4.0 was already used for the underlying benchmark test series.