Analytic API Standards Stalled

Web services Beat JOLAP and XMLA

IE Index Business Objects SA Record first quarter revenues and a major new suite release have Business Objects riding high. MicroStrategy Inc. Sustained profitability and key customer wins, plus a notable expansion at existing customer Best Buy, are good signs for MicroStrategy. Siebel Systems Inc. General malaise in the CRM market is taking the blame for Siebel's dismal first quarter performance. INDEX LEGEND HOT — On the upswing NOT — Possible trouble ahead STATUS QUO — No change

Stick to Web services for now: That's the new party line for BI software buyers. Recent reviews of the Java online analytic processing (JOLAP) API and XML for Analysis (XMLA) version 1.1 left many industry analysts shepherding BI tool developers away from these two standards until they fully mature, which could take two years or more.

JOLAP and XMLA facilitate connections between BI tools and data stores when retrieving structured data, giving users easier methods to build and maintain connections to multiple data sources. The problem, according to Forrester, is that typical customers can already get what they need from most BI tools because they provide bundled connectors to structured data sources; therefore the short-term cost savings (of choosing JOLAP or XMLA over other BI platforms) are negligible.

Several vendors, including Hyperion Solutions Corp., SAS, Microsoft, and Oracle are implementing either JOLAP or XMLA or both, but each of these companies also sits on either the XMLA Council or Java Community Process (in Oracle's case, both).

XMLA Council member Cognos Inc., on the other hand, has decided that "current APIs are more stable and perform better than XMLA or JOLAP." The company doesn't plan to support either in its products until that equation changes, according to eWeek.

Moreover, with portals and packaged portlets, alert delivery, and inline analytics, Web services prove cost efficient for enterprises and sufficient for users.

— Jill Duffy

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