PRESS: Prism Solutions -- new data warehouse tool release

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 18, 1995--Prism Solutions today announced Prism Warehouse Manager 4.3, a new release of its industry-leading data warehouse management software for companies who need to reduce the time and cost of building and maintaining data warehouses. Prism Warehouse Manager 4.3 provides support for SAP R/3, AS/400 and Teradata sources, adds productivity enhancements such as many-to-many data mappings for more flexible processing of source files, and offers expanded warehouse update capabilities for efficient data warehouse maintenance. New SAP R/3, AS/400 and Teradata Sources Prism Solutions addresses a demand by Fortune 2000 companies to automate the integration of enterprisewide data into a consolidated data warehouse of historical information for analysis and decision making. Prism Warehouse Manager 4.3 now extracts data from SAP R/3 applications on DEC and UNIX platforms, DB/400 databases on AS/400 platforms, and Teradata databases on MVS and AT&T 3000 UNIX platforms. This significantly expands Prism's sourcing capabilities, which currently include: DB2, Enscribe, IDMS, IMS, Informix, NonStop SQL, Oracle, Rdb, RMS, Sybase, VSAM and sequential files on MVS or UNIX platforms. This information can then be integrated and loaded to a target data warehouse database, such as DB2, Informix, NonStop SQL, Oracle, Rdb, Red Brick Warehouse, Sybase and Teradata. "We applaud Prism for development of this important new capability to extract data from SAP R/3, Teradata and the AS/400," said Mike Forster, president of Sybase InformationCONNECT Division. "Together Prism and Sybase now offer SAP, Teradata and AS/400 customers the ability to transform and move data into the Sybase WarehouseWORKS set of products, including SQL Server and Sybase IQ." According to Rob Armstrong, director of data warehouse marketing at AT&T Global Information Solutions, "Prism Warehouse Manager 4.3 further allows our mutual customers to achieve optimal performance and flexibility in their data warehousing initiatives, whether using a merchant RDBMS or our own Teradata. Furthermore, SAP users can now fully realize the strategic value of their R/3 data in enhanced decision support environments. The combined strengths of the Prism, SAP and AT&T GIS product offerings provides customers unprecedented access to best-in-class data warehousing solutions." Enhanced Development and Maintenance Productivity Prism Warehouse Manager provides an open, architected approach to data warehousing that is characterized by robust data extraction capabilities, advanced transformations, active meta data collection, and support for multiple source and target databases on mainframe and client/server platforms. Prism Warehouse Manager 4.3 adds a wealth of new functionality to further enhance data warehouse development and maintenance productivity. New capabilities include: o Many-to-Many Mappings - allows inputs from multiple source file types to be mapped to multiple tables in a target database in a single program, resulting in more efficient processing of source databases; o Expanded Warehouse Update - eases warehouse maintenance by allowing users to replace, insert and/or delete one or more rows in Informix, Oracle, Rdb and Sybase data warehouses; o Expanded Copy Objects - enhances development productivity by allowing customers to copy and reuse business rules and user exit routines within and between Prism Warehouse Manager COBOL programs; o IMS Direct Read - enables more efficient and flexible processing of IMS source databases by allowing users to extract data across multiple IMS databases using a logical view, or to source multiple IMS paths within a single database in one program; o Rdb Direct Read - enables more efficient and flexible processing of Rdb source databases by allowing keyed reads of Rdb tables for validating codes, looking up a value or selecting specific data for merging into the warehouse; o New Target Database - Decision DB on MasPar platforms With an intuitive graphical user interface and menu-driven selections, Prism Warehouse Manager makes it easy for users without programming skills to specify the source files, output tables, data mappings and data transformations needed for warehouse development. It automatically documents the development process by actively capturing and maintaining a collection of informational meta data describing the changes and enhancements to the data warehouse over time. Pricing and Availability Prism Warehouse Manager 4.3 is licensed for $130,000 and includes a transformation module with three concurrent developer workstation seats, one source database module and one target database module. It will be generally available in the fourth quarter of 1995. About Prism Solutions Prism Solutions is the leader in data warehouse management software for building, maintaining and navigating data warehouses. Prism Solutions' products and services provide the foundation for a variety of IT and business projects, such as building decision-support systems, implementing client/server architectures, migrating and converting data between different computing platforms, and reengineering legacy applications and business processes. Prism Solutions' customers include leading companies in the finance, health care, insurance, manufacturing, public utilities, retail, telecommunications, transportation and technology industries. Prism Solutions' corporate headquarters are located at 1000 Hamlin Court, Sunnyvale, Calif., 94089; tel: (408) 752-1888; fax: (408) 752-1875. -0- Note to Editors: Prism Warehouse Manager is a trademark of Prism Solutions, Inc. Other trademarks belong to their respective owners. --30--doc/sf* CONTACT: Prism Solutions Inc. Debbie Benoit or Cynthia Schmidt, 408/752-1888