Enabling Rapid ROI

With Java™-Based Business

Intelligence Applications

A Technology Brief by Bob Ferrante

Bob Ferrante is technical director for WebFOCUS Mobile Solutions and Java Technology. He has
over 15 years experience in the software industry and has held various technical positions. Bob
joined Information Builders in 1997 and is currently responsible for WebFOCUS mobile solutions
and Web services technologies in the WebFOCUS family of products.
 Table of Contents

1 A Growing Hunger for Information

2 Feeding the Information Hunger With

Robust, Scalable Business Intelligence

4 Support for Open Standards

5 Getting at Data: It’s What Fuels

Business Intelligence

6 Architecture

8 Security

9 Enterprise JavaBean™ (EJB) Support

10 Making the Most of Your Systems Investment

11 Addendum: Features and Benefits Chart

A Growing Hunger for Information
The Java™ 2 Enterprise Edition platform, commonly known as J2EE, has become a stable and
recognized standard for building Internet, intranet, and extranet applications. These Java-based
technologies – such as Java messaging services, J2ME (Java 2 Mobile Edition), and the Visual Age
development environment – are increasingly vital parts of the e-business, process management,
and business integration strategies for many large and midsized organizations. But as the
market adoption of this standard grows, so does the need for quality business intelligence
solutions that leverage the unique processing efficiencies of Java-based application servers.

As your company evolves, and with it your application server-hosted Internet, intranet, and
extranet solutions, your technical infrastructure will need a conduit for information about your
business processes, operations, sales, and supply chains. You will confront a near-endless
variety of individual solutions that can provide information to each of your company’s
constituencies – sales force, support personnel, back-office staff, management, customers,
suppliers, and business partners.

How do you manage this multitude of information sources? How do you satisfy increasing
demands for dynamic business information and analysis? WebFOCUS Services for Java
Environments helps organizations meet these many challenges by eliminating limits for
deployment and reach of business intelligence applications. WebFOCUS, renowned for superior
scalability, now takes advantage of the processing efficiencies of Java-based application servers
to deploy more applications to more people using the same hardware and software at a lower
per-user-cost. The result is more efficient information delivery to everyone in your enterprise
and, just as important, a quicker return on investment.

1 Information Builders
Feeding the Information Hunger With
Robust, Scalable Business Intelligence
WebFOCUS Services for Java Environments provide a stable, robust, business intelligence
platform for supplying rich, data-based content to Java application servers such as IBM
WebSphere, BEA WebLogic, Sun/Netscape iPlanet, and Microsoft IIS with new ServletExec. Most
importantly, WebFOCUS works across your entire enterprise, regardless of individual Web
architectures, application platforms, operating systems, data sources, and end user tools. It’s
the most usable, deployable, and scalable business intelligence solution on the market today.
Benefits and features include:

Usability
■ The ability to read, analyze, transfer, format, deploy, schedule, request, and update any data
on any platform
■ Sophisticated point-and-click end-user tools hosted either in HTML, 100% Pure Java™, or
Microsoft Windows™
■ The ability to fully format all data content without requiring manual formatting of cascading
stylesheets or Perl/JSP
■ Flexible formatting of content based on users’ needs; generates output that supports all
standard Web formats (HTML, GIF, PDF, Excel 2000)
■ The ability to create templates that allow you to quickly develop and deploy solutions that
feature KPIs, CRM information, profitability analyses, Pareto and trend reports, and visual
analysis – graphs, trends, progressions, regressions, scalars
■ Powerful multidimensional analysis of any data – regardless of its source format
■ A true Web Services API with a stable, consistent, and documented interface

Deployability
■ Compatibility with all network protocols and operating systems
■ The ability to work effectively and quickly with either transactional data or data warehouses
■ Both real-time and offline information delivery
■ 100% Pure Java implementation, requiring no native code and permitting portable operations
across any platform

2 Enabling Rapid ROI

■ An object-oriented, extensible design that is 100 percent plug-and-play compatible with your
Java-centric architecture
■ Insulation of your Web reporting solution from changes in Web architecture or new
software releases

Scalability
■ Native drivers for each data source and adapters for packaged applications, which result in
better query efficiency by permitting better, more customized access with a faster response
than JDBC
■ An advanced language-based engine that allows greater code compactness – allowing you to
control everything from code, and do more with less code
■ A thread-oriented architecture for the industry’s only truly scalable reporting solution – scales
from 100 to 200,000 users and beyond

3 Information Builders
Support for Open Standards
Today’s application servers follow the trend toward open, standards-based technologies with
their support for standard Java, standard messaging, and other standard platforms and
protocols. Open standards provide many advantages:
■ An equal playing field when determining solutions; uniformity of standards permits an
objective gradient for evaluation
■ More robust performance and support
■ An expanded developer knowledge base; standards mean more developers have the skill
sets you need
■ Expanded choice of solutions – permits you to select and integrate solutions from
multiple vendors

WebFOCUS Services for Java Environments support the Java 2 standard:

■ Adherence to all Java 2 servlet architecture guidelines
■ Standards-based Web applications that avoid native (CGI) code
■ A Java interface architecture
■ Support for cross-platform deployment using the same code

Other business intelligence suites rely on native-dependent interfaces, plug-ins, and proprietary
architectures that make deployment on a standards-based architecture problematic. For best
compatibility with your Java application server environment, you need a solution that plugs right in.

Web Server WebFOCUS

Report Server
Application Server
WebFOCUS Services
for Java Environments WebFOCUS
WebFOCUS Report
ReportCaster Repository

WebFOCUS
Report Server

WebFOCUS Services for Java Environments plugs WebFOCUS right into the application server’s architecture.

4 Enabling Rapid ROI

Getting at Data: It’s What Fuels
Business Intelligence
A business intelligence solution would not be successful without the ability to easily get at your
organization’s data, regardless of its format and location. WebFOCUS offers unparalleled access
to more than 85 data sources on 35 platforms and provides seamless integration with minimal
data-level work needed. Our data access adapters snap right into your existing infrastructure,
providing rapid integration of all the data sources.

Which of the following data formats are in use in your organization?

WebFOCUS Direct Data Interfaces

DB2 D&B Millennium KSAM RMS

DB2 UDB DBMS Lawson Sands RDBMS
DB2/2 dBASE Lotus ShareBase
DB2/400 DL/1 Lotus Notes Shared Medical Systems
DB2/6000 DMS ManMan SQL/DS
CICS Reporting and DSM/MUMPS MODEL 204 SUPRA
Transactions
ENSCRIBE MS-SQL Server Sybase
Informix
Essbase MS-OLAP Services SYSTEM 2000
Oracle
Excel Flat Files MUMPS System/36 Files
SAP R/3
FOCUS Net-ISAM Tandem Non-Stop
SAP BW
FOCUS Fusion NOMAD Teradata
XML
Hogan Financials NonStop SQL TOTAL
Adabas
IDS-II ODBC TurgoIMAGE
ALLBASE/SQL
IMS/DB OLE/DB UFAS
ALL-IN-1
IMS/DC Omnidex ULTRIX/SQL
ASCII
IMS/TM PACE UNIFY
BPICS
INFOAccess PeopleSoft UX C-ISAM
Btreive
Ingres PickSystems Walker Interactive
C-ISAM
Integral Proprietary Files VSAM
CA-DATACOM/DB
ISAM PROGRESS WDS
CA-IDMS
IVISoft QSAM WIIS
CA-Ingres
JDBC RdB WP
Cloudbase
J.D. Edwards RedBrick And more

5 Information Builders
Architecture
The components of WebFOCUS Services for Java Environments are designed for maximum
efficiency and scalability.

For small-scale deployments, you can deploy WebFOCUS Services for Java Environments on a
single server, with all integrated components on one machine. And when your solutions need to
scale to hundreds or even thousands of users, WebFOCUS Services for Java Environments can be
deployed across a single server or multiple servers in your environment. Load balancing and
pooling capabilities permit you to realize efficiencies of scale as you deploy solutions across
heterogeneous networks.

Components of the complete solution include:

■ Web Server/Java Application Server
■ Data engine: WebFOCUS Reporting Server, which runs on all major platforms including
Windows NT/2000, Solaris, MVS, Red Hat, Linux; note that this engine uses native code but is
developed to be portable across every supported environment
■ WebFOCUS Services for Java Environments interfaces: These provide a choice
between an all-in-one servlet and component-based JavaBean™ interfaces that plug directly
into your Java application server and provide a compliant on-server interface for the
WebFOCUS data access and reporting engine
■ ReportCaster Information Delivery: A Java application that allows users to schedule
content for distribution via e-mail, create data-driven alerts and requests, and receive
information on mobile devices through an optional two-way e-mail capability

6 Enabling Rapid ROI

 Application Application Server(s) Data Access Data Platform(s)
Presentation Platform(s)

Custom Java
UI
WebFOCUS
Services Oracle
Custom for Java
Windows UI Environments

User WebFOCUS CICS

Custom authentication Report Server
HTML UI
Real-time WebFOCUS User
reporting ReportCaster authentication XML
WebFOCUS
Java UI
Scheduling Scheduling Data access

WebFOCUS SAP
Windows UI Alert Alert Data
processing processing formatting

WebFOCUS Two-Way Two-Way Data (85+ more)

HTML UI Email Email Processing

WebFOCUS Services for Java Environments architecture.

7 Information Builders
Security
The WebFOCUS architecture includes its own robust user security solution, at both the data
access and application access levels:
■ Data access security controls not only the tables to which a particular user has access, but
also the column, row, and value levels; at value level, you can limit the amount of data that
users can view at one time (determine how much data will be accessed by a request before it
is run), and even restrict access to column values that fall above or below particular levels
■ Application access security controls access for individual users to individual applications
and even individual reports
■ Personalization features enable users to customize their own view of their applications

You can use our default security system or integrate WebFOCUS with external security systems
(e.g., SecureWay, LDAP user repositories, nTrust, VeriSign, Operating System security, etc.).

8 Enabling Rapid ROI

Enterprise JavaBean (EJB) Support ™

EJB is a Java 2 platform that provides a powerful backbone for modern distributed computing.
Using EJB gives you standardized, contracted methods for calling packaged code, business rules,
and communications logic. EJB’s localization features enable fast processing speed. What’s
more, EJB is versioned, which means even as software is upgraded, interfaces don’t change.

Information Builders’ WebFOCUS Services for Java Environments/EJB implementation permits a

high degree of extensibility and customization, allowing you to reuse our Java Services interface
for connecting any data in your enterprise.

Java developers will be able to quickly encapsulate any or all methods of our communications
interface at any level needed for projects, up to and including developing your own fully
customized Services for Java Environments interface based on our model. You can incorporate
business rules at any level of the customized interface, adding your own proprietary security
architecture (or any commonly adopted security protocol) to augment the defaults we provide.

Your Client Network Business Logic

1. Connect me to 2. Handle the

WebFOCUS protocol
conversion Skeleton

Procedure WebFOCUS
Stub Connection
Object

5. Process the 4. Communicate 3. Invoke a

results the return connection to
Value the service

WebFOCUS EJB remote procedure call architecture.

9 Information Builders
Making the Most of Your Systems Investment
Your company has invested a lot of resources, time, and effort in an e-business solution.
Optimizing that investment requires the type of comprehensive business intelligence that can
help your enterprise meet the information demands of all its constituents and manage
processes most efficiently. WebFOCUS Services for Java Environments, with its open standards
and broad cross-platform support, provides an ideal solution. To learn how WebFOCUS Services
for Java Environments can help you fully realize the value of your Java application server, talk to
us today. Call us toll-free in the U.S. and Canada at (800) 969-INFO.

10 Enabling Rapid ROI

WebFOCUS Services for Java Environments
Features Benefits
Support for major application servers Rapid integration of business intelligence
■ IBM WebSphere applications with existing Java development
■ BEA WebLogic environment
■ Sun/Netscape iPlanet
■ Microsoft IIS with New Atlanta ServletExec

On-server deployment of business intelligence More efficient processing of requests

applications

Flexible deployment options Easily scales to support any number of users

■ Deploy across a single server with all integrated
components on one machine (all-in-one servlet)
■ Deploy on multiple servers with component-
based JavaBean™ interfaces

Leverage existing load balancing and pooling Realize efficiencies of scale as applications are
capabilities deployed across heterogeneous networks

Adherence to all Java 2 standard architecture ■ More robust performance and support
guidelines and support for cross-platform ■ An expanded developer knowledge base;
deployment using the same code standard means more developers have the skill
sets you need
■ Immediate compatibility and deployment

Native access to 85+ data sources, including Oracle, ■ Real-time information delivery
CICS, SML, and SAP...on 35+ platforms, including ■ Leverages existing infrastructure
NT, Solaris, MVS, Red Hat, and Linux ■ Rapid integration of all sources
■ Portable, scalable architecture

Scheduled, event-driven, and on-demand Business problems addressed in real time by

information delivery delivering timely information to decision-makers in
the formats they use every day – e-mail, Web pages,
Excel, wireless devices, and PDFs

Security support at all levels, internal and external ■ Integrity of data and systems
■ System ■ Reliability and business continuity
■ Application
■ Database
■ Field-value

11 Information Builders
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