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Message Posted: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 @ 11:56:05 GMT

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Good Luck. No matter what tool you choose, you will not make all the people happy all the time. I have seen various methods where you divide your user community into categories based on skill (novice, power, expert) or categories based on use (farmer, explorer, miner etc...) then pick a tool that meets their needs. You also have to decide where you want the tool to do the work. For example there are tools that do the work on the Teradata platform then there are tools that do most of the work on a middle tier.

What is your data mart strategy? How many tools do you want to deploy and support? Multiple tools imply that you have to do certain things at the database level to make sure users don't get different answers using different tools.

Look at the vendors who are represented at Partners. If you can attend Partners, you will get a feel for how committed a tool vendor is to Teradata. Check to see which Teradata extensions are supported. The more Teradata specific extensions, the more committed the relationship is. For example, will it write SQL that takes advantage of the OLAP functions, volatile tables etc... Even if you don't plan to take advantage of the functions, it is an indication of the relationship.

How financially strong is the tool vendor. Our tool vendor layed off a significant portion of their support staff. This has an effect on technical support.

Tools that I have heard that people are happy with include Microstrategy, Brio, Business Objects, SAS, Queryman and WTO (Write Your Own).

Jim

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