Business

Intelligence with
IBM Alphablox

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 What is Alphablox?
 Alphablox is the reporting application
from IBM
 
 It is primarily used by those
organizations where Business
Intelligence/ Data warehousing is
implemented.

 Alphablox was acquired by IBM in

2004.

 It is also bundled as part of the IBM

DB2 Data warehouse Edition

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 Advantage
 It's major advantage is that through
programming, we can deliver almost
any GUI/functionalities/features for the
end users

Disadvantage
 Its major disadvantage, if at all, unlike
traditional reporting tools, is that it
requires extensive programming skills
especially J2EE.

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 BI with Alphablox

All BI projects would require one or more

reporting/analysis tool and Alphablox is one
among the many that is available to
customers.

Alphablox is a reporting tool from the IBM

stack, which can be used as a front end in BI
projects. It can work with most popular back
ends such as Oracle, DB2, SQL Server etc.

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 BI with Alphablox

Organizations who use Alphablox as their

reporting tool in BI projects, prefer the same
because of the need for very high level of
customization, as well as the need to create
own analytical applications within the
customers existing business applications

If you want to be successful in using Alphablox,

make sure you are familiar with the J2EE
framework.

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What is an Alphablox
Application?
For End-users:

 A collection of web pages for reporting

applications
 Provides relevant, business critical
information
 Integrated with business logic
 Allows analytical tasks on business data via
an easy-to-use interface

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 Alphablox
Application

For Application developers:

 It is a collection of components managed by

Alphablox Analytics

 JSP pages with

• Tags
• HTML
• Java script
• Java script lets
• Graphics, etc

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 What are
Blox?
• Blox are reusable components
• Added to a JSP page using custom JSP tags
• They are built upon JavaBeans
• You specify:
• The data source and query to extract the
data
• How to present the data
• How you want your audience to view,
manipulate, analyse, share, collaborate or
comment on the data
• Not all Blox are visible

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 Alphablox Analytics
Architecture

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 Data Tier:
Supported Multidimensional Data Sources
 Essbase
• 6.5.x,6.2.x,6.1 patch 5 or greater
• Showcase Strategy 4.1.050 or greater
• DB2 OLAP Server 7.1 Essbase FP6 or greater
 Hyperion Essbase – Hybrid Analysis 6.5.3
 Hyperion Essbase Enterprise Services 6.5.3
 Hyperion Essbase XTD Integration Services 6.5.4 (drill
through support)
 Microsoft Analysis Services SQL Server 2000 Analysis
Services SP3
 IBM DB2 OLAP 8.1 (or greater); 7.1 (Fix Pack5 or
Later)
 Micro strategy 7.2.2
 Alphablox Cubes

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 Data Tier:
Supported Relational Data Sources

 Oracle 9i, 8i (8.1.7.1 or Later)

 Microsoft SQL Server (SQL Server 2000
Enterprise/Standard Edition SP3)
 IBM DB2 Universal (8.1.2 Fix Pack 2; 7.2)
 Sybase Adaptive Server (12.5; 12)

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 J2EE and Application
Servers

 J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) is the standard

platform for developing multi-tiered enterprise
applications based on Java programming
language

 J2EE simplifies enterprise applications by:

• Basing them on standardised, modular
components
• Providing a complete set of services to those
components
• Handling many details of application
behavior automatically without complex
programming

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 Services Used by
Alphablox

 The J2EE security model

• Used by Alphablox for user
authorization
 JNDI lookup services
• Provides a unified interface to multiple
naming and directory services.
Application components can access
these services
 JDBC 2 Data Access Model
• Allows access to connection pooling

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Supported J2EE Application Servers

 IBM’s Websphere v. 4.0.4 – Advanced Edition

 BEA’s WebLogic v.7 (SP 2 or higher); 8.1.1
 Standalone solution: Tomcat v. 3.2.4
• Tomcat is SUN’s reference JSP and Servelet
implementation

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 About Keysoft

For Training on BI visit:

http://www.keysoft.co.in/training.htm
or mail us at
training@keysoft.co.in

For BI Services mail us at:

sales@keysoft.co.in

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