Powerplay vs Oracle vs Hyperion

[Jeff Hoffman]

John

Before Powerhouse web and without a source of funds to purchase anything, I
used CGI scripts and Powerhouse (usually quick) to generate web pages, you
could do anyting including drill down and sidways according to your
requirements.

This cost the installation of a web server on the machine on which
powerhouse runs (we used apache software).

The advantages of this was minimal upfront cost, using existing software,
minimal retraining, versatility.

Disadvantage, need to know HTML, ongoing cost of inhouse development.
However you are going to have these anyway.

A problem was that you needed a program to decode the WEB Server parmeters
to environment variables (symbols etc) safely. Operating system commands
can be embedded within text sent by a user, you program must make sure this
does not happen.

security:

we wanted to let students have access to lookup and update confidential
data, to provide security, we had students use a login web page that
created a token which was include in all subsequent web pages, this token
could be validated when confidential information was requested.

also using the setup, we had the web server software running in an account
which did not have access to the databases, an access script effectively
did a change user to access the databases and other files.

Hope this helps.


Jeff




At 11:58 AM 24-04-01 -0300, you wrote:
>Hi,
>
>We are in the process of looking at different approaches
>that will allow our end users the ability to view our
>detailed data warehouse information through the web (or
>otherwise) at summary and detailed levels.  We have looked 
>at both Cognos and Oracle tools and have had site visits by
>each.  We will be looking at Hyperion and their tools and
>we are also going to investigate writing the application in
>house.
>
>One thing that we might need is the ability to add 'what if'
>scenarios to these queries.  It doesn't seem likely with the
>Cognos or Oracle approaches that this is possible without 
>some sort of customization on our part.
>
>Another biggie is the cost.  Looks like hundreds of thousands!
>
>Does anyone have good, bad, or ugly comments on any of the
>above software ventures that they wouldn't mind passing along?
>
>Any suggestions would be great.
>
>P.S. We run many oracle7 databases and our legacy system is written
>in Powerhouse 4GL on top of Interbase.
>
>Thanks,
>-John
>
>= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
>Mailing list: powerh-l@lists.swau.edu
>Subscribe: "subscribe" in message body to powerh-l-request@lists.swau.edu
>Unsubscribe: "unsubscribe" in message body to powerh-l-request@lists.swau.edu
>http://lists.swau.edu/mailman/listinfo/powerh-l
>This list is closed, thus to post to the list you must be a subscriber.
>
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
+ Jeff Hoffman                          + e-mail: wonicon@bigpond.net.au    +
+ Director                              +                                   +
+ WoniCon Pty Ltd   (ABN 93 083 502 630)+                          ,-_|\    +
+ 21 Prices Circuit                     + voice: +61 2 9542 1527  /     \   +
+ Woronora    NSW     2232              +   fax: +61 2 9521 3979  \_,-._*   +
+ AUSTRALIA                             +                              v    +
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
+