In a move resembling Seagate Software IncÆs decision to give away its business intelligence client away for free in June, (CI No 3,678), smaller rival QueryObject Systems Corp yesterday announced it is to give away its thin client analysis software free of charge. QueryObject CEO Bob Thompson told ComputerWire that the idea is to do away with the accepted wisdom that client BI software must be sold on a per-seat basis, to bring simple query capability to the 85% of the workforce he reckons do not have access to this type of application.
Users must first buy QueryObject System, which can cost between $50,000 and $300,000, but it can be accessed by an unlimited number of employees working through a regular browser. The client itself is a 400k Java applet which downloads into a browser at a start of a session allowing the user to make ad hoc queries against data held in the QueryObject Analyzer Server.
Thompson says the speed of querying over the web is tolerable due to QueryObjectÆs unique way of storing data. Data cubes are constructed using complex fractal-based mathematics to make creating the warehouse faster and the end product smaller. The company says in its own benchmarks against the likes of Oracle Express and Arbor Essbase last year, a cube was created that was around the same size as the raw data, around twenty times faster than the competition.
