Product architecture
Today’s Mid-market enterprises and departments within larger organizations are taking advantage of a widening selection of technologies that allow for universal publication and dissemination of data. With the advent of Internet-based smart client computing, first on Java and more recently on .NET architectures, this trend will only increase. Smart client computing combines the best characteristics of the thin and rich client paradigms, offering low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) with applications that take advantage of high-powered desktop PCs and no-touch deployment of both data and software. more...

Databeacon's middleware runs on Microsoft, Unix and Linux servers

Databeacon Inc. is at the forefront of this exciting new technology, and its flagship product families, Databeacon Smart Client and Databeacon Open Client, are setting the standard in Web Reporting and Data Analysis solutions. The software employs smart client technology to optimize and leverage the power of the Internet. It offers the heavy lifting of reporting and analysis applications with a light load on I.T. resources, and a satisfying end-user experience of self-serve explorable reports that requires no software installation, training or manuals.

Databeacon’s smart client software enables anyone to interact with and graphically analyze data over the Internet. Databeacon’s smart client viewers automatically load in the user PC’s browser. To enable report exploration and analysis, the server extracts data from a data store such as a relational database, reformats the input data into a highly compressed, aggregated format called a Databeacon CORE cube, and returns the cube to the client PC, either as a temporary file or embedded inside an HTML page. Upon receiving the CORE cube, the Databeacon viewer is then loaded, which reads the cube into memory, and presents the data in explorable graphs and tables.

Databeacon CORE
At the heart of the Databeacon solution is the Client OLAP Reporting Environment (CORE). The Databeacon CORE is included in all Databeacon products, and supports the publication of CORE cube report designs, builds and deployments. more...

Publish
I.T. administrators and report developers use the Databeacon Publisher component to create a layout of the data, saving the final layout as a CORE cube profile. It contains the location of the data source (standard RDBMS via ODBC or JDBC, text files, URL or executable output) and how the input data fields map to an output format more suitable to individualized data analysis.

There are two types of mapping: descriptive fields and numeric fields. Two or more descriptive fields such as State and City can be mapped into a single hierarchical category. This will later allow analysis of the data in a Web report by State, and then optionally to expand any State to the underlying City details. Numeric fields are mapped and aggregated as measures. Date fields are automatically recognized, and by default, map into a pre-determined hierarchy — years, quarters, months, and days.

Build
The Databeacon Builder component extracts and transforms data according to the mappings in the CORE cube profile, and creates a CORE cube, a highly compressed aggregated data file for deployment on the Web server.

As Databeacon Builder processes the data, it builds an internal representation of all the unique categories, along with sufficient information to compute aggregates for any intersection of these categories. It next compresses this representation to an encoded format suitable for deployment on a Web Server.

The Databeacon Builder process is extremely fast, processing from 10,000 to 25,000 rows of input data per second. The resulting cube is frequently quite small, compressing megabytes of raw data into a very compact kilobyte footprint. The actual size largely depends on the number of unique categories and the number of combinations of categories that have an intermediate total.

Deploy
Normally, Databeacon CORE cube builds and deployments are part of a scheduled process, with daily, weekly or monthly Web reports deployed on a Web server for everyone to access by simply clicking on a link. But more and more frequently, Databeacon Web reports are dynamically constructed at the request of an individual viewer

View, create, collaborate
To view, create and collaborate on Databeacon Web reports, report developers and/or users choose from the smart client viewers available in the Databeacon Smart Client and Databeacon Open Client product families. The Databeacon Smart Client family offers three viewers — Web Reporter, Player and Insight — built on the .NET Framework, and matched to differing user reporting and analysis needs. The Databeacon Open Client family offers Databeacon Insight, an easily self-personalized Java applet that allows users to analyze and explore reports through an industry-standard browser equipped with a Java Virtual Machine (JVM).

Independent of product family, all Databeacon viewers employ smart client technology and no-touch deployment to automatically install on the user’s PC. Operational managers are then able to interactively and graphically analyze data that might fill hundreds of pages in a traditional static report. They can look for trends, patterns, and anomalies in the data, and, when something of interest is uncovered, look deeper by applying filters, changing graphs, or drilling through to the source details. And again, there is no need to install software, go to training courses or read manuals. It all starts with just one click.

There are two main advantages to this architectural approach. First, it simplifies setup because there is usually just one server to purchase, install, execute and maintain. Second, deployment is massively scalable because once Databeacon has downloaded to the PC, there are no additional CPU cycles needed from the server; enabling thousands of people to simultaneously view, create and collaborate on their Web reports using a single-server software license.

Databeacon enables operational managers in Mid-market enterprises and departments of larger organizations to graphically analyze Web reports over the Internet. It provides the ability to deliver intuitive, interactive data to a global audience, without an infrastructure explosion or maintenance burden. Databeacon delivers an elegant solution for today’s Web Reporting and Data Analysis needs.