BI is all about bringing data to users and empowering them with tools and techniques for converting the data into rich business information — a conventional approach to BI made popular by various vendors. But the arrival of Web services has added a new dimension to BI. In order to achieve wider data integration and maximize returns on investment, BI tools must be able to "reach out and touch someone" — in other words, acquire external services, as well as present internal capabilities, as services for controlled consumption by others.

PowerAnalyzer 4.0 from Informatica is a feature-rich and technology-progressive solution that takes BI a big step forward in this direction.

What You See

After logging into PowerAnalyzer via a browser, you see a multitabbed user interface that takes you to the PowerAnalyzer 4.0 Dashboard, where you will find your preferred indicators, reports, and alerts that declare the latest good news (or, more likely, bad news). Selecting a report takes you to the Analyze tab, which provides a number of options for analysis and drill-down. The Find tab presents a folder view of all available reports, and two other tabs let you create reports and manage your preferences. Finally, the Administration tab offers numerous administrative options if you have administrator privileges.

Navigating a browser-based interface can be quirky: To switch back from the Analyze tab to the Dashboard, do you click on Dashboard or the browser Back button? If you make changes to the Dashboard and then hit Back and then Forward, will your changes persist? Fortunately, PowerAnalyzer handles these potential pitfalls intelligently, and you usually get what you expect. Overall, the user interface is quite pleasing — well laid out, good color schemes (always important ), and sensible behavior.

What You Get

Informatica PowerAnalyzer 4.0 has a slew of features to help you get the most out of your business data.

Alerts and indicators. You can set up alerts, mentioned earlier, to receive notification (using a variety of delivery options) when a cached report updates or a metric data value reaches a threshold. Indicators let you visually represent critical business metrics in a variety of forms, such as charts, tables, and gauges.

Analytic reporting. But at the heart of BI is analytic reporting, and PowerAnalyzer 4.0 has very strong reporting features. Creating a report is simple:

• Select metrics (such as sales revenue) and attributes for that metric (for example, product and region).
• Set a ranking of the attributes based on ascending or descending values of a metric.
• Specify filters on metrics and attributes that set a range on the report data (for example, viewing revenue for Top-10 products or viewing products that generate a certain amount of revenue).
• Select a time period across which to see the metric change (such as quarterly).
• Set up a preferred layout for the report.
• Publish the report.