CNS is proud to announce that version 4.4 of the DataWarehouse Explorer and DataWarehouse Explorer Portal has been released.
Version 4.4 brings many new exiting features, including:
A full list of what has been added can be found in the version history.
The DWE Portal has been extended with the following features:
A fully functional trial of the DataWarehouse Explorer can downloaded from our downloads section. You can also request an evaluation of the Portal on one of our servers, please contact our sales department for more information.
TI Group, a global company active in Automotive strengthens the use of the DataWarehouse Explorer solution. With headquarters in England, but with operations worldwide and 18,000 people working for the TI Group, the firm is a company of size, which provides more than 70% of the automobile manufacturers in the world.
CNS International is a provider of software for analysis and reporting on top of Microsoft's platform for business intelligence.
TI Group has selected Datawarehouse Explorer after evaluating solutions from the provider of the platform, because of the solution's performance and ease of using Datawarehouse Explorer for analysis. A good benchmark is obviously the area of finance, with its millions of rows of data, and has led the pilot project with the Datawarehouse Explorer.
TI Group intends to use Datawarehouse Explorer enterprise wide in all its offices in the Americas, EMEA and AsiaPacific; divided over Finance, Purchasing, Sales, Operations, and the ERP system. Clearly an example of the potential of the Datawarehouse Explorer of CNS.
Chris Webb, has been working with Microsoft's Business Intelligence tools since 1998. He is a well-known figure in the Microsoft Business Intelligence community, regularly contributing to newsgroups and online discussion forums, and has spoken at several international conferences. He is a co-author of the second edition of the book "MDX Solutions with Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services 2005 and Hyperion Essbase" along with George Spofford. His weblog can be found at http://spaces.msn.com/cwebbbi. Chris has extensive experience of implementing Business Intelligence solutions on the Microsoft platform across a wide range of industries including pharmaceuticals, banking, engineering, manufacturing and market research. He has worked as a consultant (including three years with Microsoft Consulting Services) and as a permanent employee on internal development teams, and understands the different demands of each role.
You can read his review of Datawarehouse Explorer on his blog
Landwirtschaftliche Rentenbank, Frankfurt am Main, was set up by statute in 1949 to act as a central refinancing institution for agriculture and the food industry. It is a public law institution with a mandate to promote agriculture and rural areas. The bank operates under the legal supervision of the German federal government and the banking supervision of the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin). The bank provides refinancing for all types of projects associated with agriculture or rural areas. Its loans, which are principally channeled through other banks are granted in favour of producers in agriculture, businesses in the food industry as well as other companies associated with agriculture and food production.
Rentenbank provides refinancing to all banks within the European Union involved in financing agriculture, related sectors thereof and rural areas, irrespective of their legal form or association membership. The bank’s main activity is the granting of medium and long-term promotional loans, around 36 % of which are granted at particularly favourable interest rates in the context of the bank’s special loan programs. Furthermore, the bank grants standard promotional loans for agriculture and rural areas as well as short-term loans to pre-finance payments to farmers, which are subsequently refunded by the European Union.
Rentenbank’s long-term obligations are triple A-rated by Moody’s Investors Service, Standard and Poor’s and Fitch Ratings. The criteria, which led to this rating were the low risk of the bank’s loan portfolio, its stable profit, financial and asset position together with the bank’s special public law status, which includes a maintenance obligation (Anstaltslast) by the Federal Republic of Germany. Rentenbank’s short-term obligations were awarded A-1+ (Standard and Poor’s), P-1 (Moody’s Investors Service) respectively F1+ (Fitch Ratings).
Landwirtschaftliche Rentenbank is a member of the German Association of Public Sector Banks (Bundesverband Öffentlicher Banken Deutschlands e.V.).
As at 31 December 2007, the bank’s total capital in the balance sheet (in accordance with German Commercial Code [HGB]) amounted to € 2 901.3 million. Contributions paid in by the German agricultural and forestry sector between 1949 and 1958 formed the basis of this fund. It is for this reason that any unappropriated profits, which remain after allocations to reserves may only be used to promote agriculture in the public interest.
In 2007 Rentenbank decided to upgrade from Microsoft SQL Server 2000 to SQL Server 2005. Initially it was planned to use the 2005 version of the existing frontend which was already in use to query SQL Server 2000 as the new frontend to SQL Server 2005.
When the migration to SQL Server 2005 reached the testing phase we discovered that the 2005 version of the old frontend was not yet ready to use in an productive environment.
In order to find viable alternatives we initiated an evaluation process. Rentenbank short listed three products and after comparing these in a "proof-of-concept" scenario side-by-side. The final ranking of the products was based on criteria like usability, search capabilities, response time, basic OLAP navigation (drill down, drill up, slice & dice), handling of attributes, drill-through capabilities, graphical presentation, publishing and distribution but also support reaction time.
The ranking of the products was done by reviewing criteria like usability, search capabilities, response time, basic OLAP navigation (drill down, drill up, slice & dice), handling of attributes (which were new to SQL Server 2005; and our new development used attributes heavily), support reaction time, and drillthrough capabilities.
In the end DataWarehouse Explorer won our internal evaluation process and became our new frontend for SQL Server 2005.
Rentenbank selected the best-of-breed components for the new BI infrastructure: an Microsoft SQL server 2005 based Datawarehouse with DataWarehouse Explorer as the BI front-end tool for accessing and analyzing information from the Datawarehouse.
“We experienced DataWarehouse Explorer as a user-friendly OLAP client with a quick learning curve for users who have a basic understanding of OLAP and the ideas behind it.”
“During and after the introduction phase of DataWarehouse Explorer, we had a close collaboration with the product developers of CNS International. They listened to our needs and desires for new features.”
“The recently introduced new deployment feature works well and reduces maintenance costs. By using DataWarehouse Explorer, we are able to meet and improve the criteria of Rentenbank’s triple A rating and improve her profits, financial and asset positions.”
The replacement of the old system, implementing DataWarehouse Explorer and deployment was realized within 4 months. The new system was immediately accepted by the information workers and contributed to increased efficiency and profitability. Today, more than 50 information workers are using DataWarehouse Explorer on a daily bases, and the results produced by DataWarehouse Explorer are managed, published and distributed using the DataWarehouse Explorer - Portal throughout the company. Rentenbank uses OLAP technology to analyse trades, cashflows, balance sheet data (in order to fulfil IFRS issues), securities and limits.
CNS is proud to announce that version 4.3 of the DataWarehouse Explorer and DataWarehouse Explorer Portal has been released. Version 4.3 brings many new exiting features, including: