Kognitio launches Pablo BI tool to overcome OLAP problems

Business intelligence (BI) and data warehousing firm Kognitio has officially released Pablo, a product designed to remove problems associated with the creation of physical OLAP cubes for in-depth data analytics.

Pablo allows businesses to create virtual cubes that sit on top of Kognitio's WX2 database.

With physical cubes, organisations usually have to collect data, calculate how it will be used by data scientists and then build the OLAP cube, but virtual cubes allow business users to analyse as much data as they need instantly, explained Roger Gaskell, Kognitio chief technology officer.

"People have always found that OLAP cubes produce slow analytics results, with people getting answers to their queries 20 minutes later. The cubes take a long time to build and the IT department has to update them," he told V3.co.uk.

"Pablo allows users to look at data as if it was in an OLAP cube but actually they are looking at the live, real-time data sitting in the database."

Pablo includes support for XMLA, which allows other front-end BI tools such as IBM Cognos, SAP Business Objects and Microstrategy to connect seamlessly to the virtual OLAP cubes, said Gaskell.

"Organisations have invested in these types of front-end BI tools that provide data visualisation, and now these tools can talk directly to the database," he added.

Kognitio has also released A La Carte, a system that will allow users to merge the benefits of Pablo and Microsoft Excel.

"Excel is not that good at visualising large data sets, but A La Carte makes it more capable," said Gaskell.

Meanwhile, BI firm QlikTech told V3.co.uk that it will release further mobile updates in the coming months.

Unlike Kognitio, QlikTech does not use OLAP cubes and prides itself on the ease of use of its flagship QlikView software.

QlikView is powered by in-memory search technology that allows customers to analyse large data sets from a simple interface.

QlikTech has recently announced mobile versions of QlikView for the iPhone and iPad, and said on Wednesday that more mobility updates are on the way, but could not immediately provide more details.