March 18, 1997 11:00 AM ET
Oracle finally ready with new data mart product
By Juan Carlos Perez

Oracle Corp. will announce a tightly integrated and complete data mart bundle next month that includes a version of its Designer 2000 tool tailored for data mart modeling. The bundle will also include the company's core Oracle7 database and technology licensed from Sagent Technology Inc. for extracting and cleaning data. The Sagent technology also will allow users to populate the target data mart database and manage the mart's metadata. Although Oracle had been planning to offer a data mart bundle for more than six months, the timetable got set back because Oracle had been unable to line up a partner that could provide the technology Sagent brings to the table. Oracle has been in advanced negotiations with Sagent at least since the end of January. The Oracle Web Application Server 3.0 and the Oracle Web Request Broker also will be included in the bundle to provide Web access and Web connectivity to the data mart. On the OLAP front, the bundle will include the Oracle Express calculation engine which would be used to analyze data stored in Oracle7, the Oracle7 Relational Online Analytical Processing option announced recently by the Redwood Shores, Calif., company. A stripped-down version of Oracle's Discoverer end-user analysis tool also would be included in the offering, although customers could use any of the end-user query and analysis tools now available from other companies, sources said. All the components have been tightly integrated and tailored to work together in a seamless fashion, the sources said. Although pricing hasn't been determined for this Windows NT offering, Oracle plans to be very aggressive, a clear indication the database giant wants to recover the ground it may have lost to archrivals Informix Software Inc., IBM and Sybase Inc., which offer similar bundles. Sagent, of Menlo Park, Calif., sells its own offering in this space called the Sagent Data Mart Solution, a Windows NT client/server bundle that comes with an application server, a metadata repository, a design module, an end-user decision support tool and security features. Copyright(c) 1997 Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Ziff-Davis Publishing Company is prohibited. PC Week and the PC Week logo are trademarks of Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. PC Week Online and the PC Week Online logo are trademarks of Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. Send mail to PC Week