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Partner TechTip: Performing Top-Down Trend Analysis of Your Business Information Is Not Always Easy

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How do you leverage business information easily for on-the-spot analysis?

 

Do you need to extract transaction data to your PC for analysis? Is there too much data for your PC to handle? Do you need to move the data in a spreadsheet for ease of use? Does your team need to take the data on the road to critical accounts?

 

You can download data from your IBM i DB2 database to a PC using tools such as FTP, Client Access, JDBC, and ODBC. The problem is that your PC may not be able to handle the volume of data. Wouldn't it be nice to have a tool that can summarize the data, either on the IBM i server or the PC, a tool that shows you the detail behind the summaries, the story behind the data?

SEQUEL Has the Answers

SEQUEL is that tool. SEQUEL has two easy-to-use options—host tabling and client tabling—that you can use to summarize transaction data into spreadsheet-like tables.

 

Figure 1 shows how downloaded transaction data might look as a list in a standard SEQUEL view. Without SEQUEL tabling, this type of request could use millions of records—too much data to send to a Windows desktop.

 

040111Helpimage1 

Figure 1: This is the SEQUEL data view before tabling. (Click images to enlarge.)

 

View Spreadsheet-Like Summaries

You can use SEQUEL host tabling to automatically summarize IBM i DB2 transaction data into spreadsheet?like files with summary rows, columns, totals, rankings, percent of total, and other calculations (see Figure 2). The host tabling views organize data into columns for regions, time periods, or other categories. And you can output this summarized data to multiple formats, including XLS, XML, or CSV.

 

040111Helpimage2

Figure 2: Here's the SEQUEL view organized using host tabling.

 

Take Your Data on the Road

SEQUEL client tabling is an interactive solution for dynamic desktop Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) and cube analysis. It offers drill-down, reporting, analysis, ranking, and graphing functions to help you take your data on the road.

 

First, you consolidate data from your database into a portable, standalone module. Then, you use the drag-and-drop features of the free Client Tabling Viewer to reorganize the data and view the results without affecting the database. And you can do all this without connecting to the host server (unless the data needs to be refreshed).

 

040111Helpimage3

Figure 3: And here's your SEQUEL view organized using client tabling.

 

See how SEQUEL can stop the data overload on your desktop and make your data easier to use and more portable. Call us at 800.328.1000 for a free demo or 30?day trial. And check out the online video presentation of host tables and client tables.

as/400, os/400, iseries, system i, i5/os, ibm i, power systems, 6.1, 7.1, V7, V6R1

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