Your comments here are a bit misleading.
a) DDS defined files are still relational files. Its very possible that
you don't have things like referential integrity (relationships and
constraints) defined in "legacy" databases, but that implies the tool (or
preferably in meta data) you build those relationships. If you do it in
Meta data, every report can leverage that without having to understand the
relationships at the report authoring level. That's the beauty of a true
Business Intelligence tool with a meta data layer like DB2 Web Query. It
is not a difficult process to set up join definitions over your data - as
you are probably having to do this in every report today anyway (and if
you do it in meta data, you do it ONCE, not in every report).
b) Why do you say its too expensive? IBM has made at least 1 core licenses
(sometimes more than 1 core) of DB2 Web Query Express Edition available to
EVERY customer who owns Query/400 (which is just about EVERY customer) AT
NO CHARGE. Yes, this is a license with minimal users, but all the web
based report authoring capabilities, security center, all the output types
(PDF, Excel, Auto Drill down, etc.) are included in that Express Edition.
I don't know where you're getting your information but I would encourage
Jamal to download the DB2 Web Query redbook from IBM's wiki
http://ibm.co/db2wqwiki to get a feel for the product.
Regards,
Kathy Steinbrink
midrange.com
