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Actuate Analytics Option

Actuate Analytics extends the Actuate Enterprise Reporting Application Platform

by providing web-based Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) capabilities to power

users, business analysts and management. Actuate Analytics empowers these

users to interactively explore information, to build insightful, multi-dimensional

reports and to facilitate good decisions while giving IT control over access to the

underlying data sources.

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OverviewActuate Analytics extends the Actuate Enterprise Reporting Application Platform by providing web-based Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) capabilities to power users, business analysts and management. Actuate Analytics empowers these users to interactively explore information, to build insightful, multi-dimensional reports, and to facilitate good decisions while giving IT control over access to the underlying data sources.

Business operations need not only to know what happened, but also to understand why it happened, what factors might have contributed to the result and what decisions can be made to improve it. Actuate Analytics allows users to find trends, compare time periods and find patterns in, as an example, sales performance by product line. It can compare fund returns by eligibility, graph store sales by product by date, even show month-over-month growth in sales of green patio furniture in the southwestern region. Actuate Analytics enables better, quicker, more effective business decisions throughout the organization.

Spanning the enterprise is Actuate Analytics’ strength. Unlike traditional ivory tower OLAP products, Actuate Analytics introduces large user communities to multi-dimensional analysis and reporting through the use of personalized cubes. By personalizing both the cube and the viewing interface, Actuate Analytics is able to present an OLAP experience that is tailored and scoped to the right level for each user, and thus is able to present analytic information to a larger user community. IT controls the user interface and data access rights while leveraging the renowned strengths of the Actuate iServer—scale, security, and reliability.

Actuate Analytics enhances the Actuate Enterprise Reporting Application platform through its unique ability to deliver personalized cubes and reports to thousands of information consumers, arming them with the power to make strong, competitive business decisions.

Actuate Analytics is packaged as a new option to the Actuate iServer, which includes cube manufacturing, scheduling, delivery, and manipulation using the included, Actuate Analytics Viewer. The Actuate Analytics Designer, which creates the definition, or profile, of an Analytics cube, is available separately.

Product Brochure: Actuate Analytics Option

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Features and BenefitsActuate Analytics extends the Actuate Enterprise Reporting Application Platform, empowering an expanding audience of users with self-serve analytics. It delivers interactive, multi-dimensional analysis and reporting over the internet, allowing power users and information consumers to get more insight and value from their enterprise data. Key benefits are:

• Self-serve analytics delivering high adoption without prerequisite training

• Actuate iServer integration scales to thousands of users over the internet

• Offline Mobility improves personal productivity and increases information utility

• Low total cost of ownership (TCO)• Companion to Actuate e.Analysis

Actuate Analytics is an integral member of Actuate 7, providing seamless navigation from cube to spreadsheet to report and leveraging the power, performance, scale and control provided by the Actuate iServer. Its purpose-built internet architecture delivers numerous, and often unique benefits when included in Enterprise Reporting Applications hosted by the Actuate iServer and accompanying solutions created with Actuate’s e.Report Designer Professional, e.Spreadsheet and Actuate Query family of products.

Enables Self-Serve Analytics Without Prerequisite TrainingActuate Analytics delivers rich, robust OLAP capabilities–slice and dice, filter, sort, hide, calculations, drill to details and more. Analytics is distinguished by an intuitive approach to data analysis that requires no costly end-user training and ensures a high adoption rate. IT controls the depth by which a user can interact with the data by setting which features are exposed by the Analytics Cube Viewer. End-users can work in varied presentation formats, online or offline and export to Excel, PDF, or other desktop products for continued analysis or data redistribution.

Actuate iServer Integration Scales To Thousands of Users Actuate Analytics introduces a new, scalable approach to multi-dimensional data distribution. Traditional Multi-dimensional (MOLAP) solutions create and host hyper-cubes on the server, allowing analysts access through a client or browser. This allows small groups of users to access large volumes of data, but it does not provide for large numbers of users to participate in the analysis. Actuate Analytics combines the server-side cube construction of MOLAP with the personal productivity benefits of Desktop OLAP (DOLAP) products. When an Analytics user initiates a session, a copy of the data and the cube analyzer, the Analytics Cube Viewer, are sent to the user’s browser, and all subsequent processing occurs at the user’s PC. This architecture frees the server to attend to thousands of users, while each user enjoys fast, consistent performance without the concern of client-server issues such as concurrency, load and network latency that often slows productivity, forcing users to wait through each page refresh following every mouse click.

Offline Mobility Improves Personal Productivity and Increases Information UtilityActuate Analytics offers each user the unique ability to work offline with their own personal cube. This translates into improved productivity for sales and marketing analysts, frequent travelers and telecommuters. Working offline provides the freedom for users to browse the cube during non-business hours—even on airline flights—time that can improve the familiarity with the information and the quality of the analysis.

Low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)Actuate Analytics provides an unmatched low total cost of ownership with no training requirement, minimal hardware infrastructure, high user scalability and low maintenance and administration.

Product Brochure: Actuate Analytics Option

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Self-Serve Analytics Without Prerequisite TrainingActuate Analytics delivers the functionality to explore and analyze large volumes of data by any analyst, but equally as important, it propagates the insights derived from this analysis to thousands of users across the internet, all at the same time.

• How Actuate Analytics Works• Actuate Analytics Cube Designer• Actuate Analytics Cube Viewer• Advanced Analysis

How Actuate Analytics WorksIn order to deliver large amounts of data to large numbers of users, Actuate Analytics first pre-packages the source data into highly compressed multi-dimensional data files called cubes. These cubes capture the data in hierarchical categories, keeping track of the parent-child relationships and how measures or values roll up at each parent or summary level. Cubes are defined using the Analytics Cube Designer and published and generated by the Actuate iServer. Cube compression ensures that the data can be analyzed and reports can be viewed at each users PC, freeing up server resources to address requests from thousands more users.

End-users access cubes through Actuate’s Active Portal or from within their enterprise reporting application. Once selected, the cube, its reports and Actuate Analytics Cube Viewer are sent to the browser where the user explores and analyzes the data, using rich OLAP functionality to discover key insights to support their business decisions. As that user explores, they create snapshot reports that can be saved both locally and back to the iServer. These cube reports can then be shared with everyday information consumers allowing them to benefit quickly from the analysis.

Actuate Analytics Cube DesignerThe Actuate Analytics Designer is a Java application used by IT to create the definition of a cube, called a profile. A cube profile contains the source data location, query and structure definitions and

mappings to categories, and measures to be created in the cube. The Cube Designer includes an easy to use query editor to retrieve information from relational data sources. The editor includes drag and drop table and column manipulation, parameterization, direct SQL access, and data preview capabilities.

IT then defines the hierarchical structure of the categories, adds transformations, calculated measures and measure summaries and establishes the formats for values, colors, and the presentation of the cube. The Analytics Designer can also build a cube directly, allowing designers to rapidly prototype and test their solutions, reducing development time and costs.

Actuate Analytics Cube ViewerThe Actuate Analytics Viewer combines common data analysis features with a dynamic interface so that users with a wide range of analytic experience can easily navigate and explore their data. The Analytics Viewer then lets users create, save and share cube reports with other users. The Analytics Viewer

Product Brochure: Actuate Analytics Option

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includes the analytic features one would expect to find in an OLAP tool, including the following:

• Expand and collapse to go up and down the hierarchy of categories

• Expand to level to go directly to known data• Stacked categories (4 deep on each axis)• Drag and swap (pivot) rows and columns• Display measure as a value, or % of row, column, or

grand total• Sorting, including Top n and Worst n• Filters (including pattern filters)• Hiding• Table, chart, and graph data visualizations• Calculations / functions• Drill to detail source records• Link to other cubes, reports, and web applications• Integrates with Microsoft Excel and Word, Adobe

Acrobat• Undo / Redo (last 10)

Advanced AnalysisAdditionally, the Actuate Analytics Viewer offers numerous features that go beyond standard OLAP and that greatly contribute to its fast adoption by users without any prerequisite training.

Save reports—Reports, or perspectives of the cube, can be saved by the analyst and by each individual user. These reports can be revisited in subsequent cube sessions, or later, with new cube data.

Presentation choice—Report data can be displayed in the format best suited to the analytic need or to user’s preference. The Analysis view offers rich analytical capabilities, while the Presentation view is a format designed for familiar high-impact displays and re-distribution.

Experience levels—Pre-defined or customizable experience levels tailor the interface to the user’s skills, or the application need. The default levels are Standard, Novice and Advanced.

Category display—Users can choose hierarchical or columnar display to enhance readability, and can simultaneously show categories open at different

levels. This allows the user to compare results for Canada (country) at the same time as California (state) and Chicago (city).

Category and subcategory filtering—Display only the selected subcategories, even crossing category levels, to expose only the data that matters.

Exception highlighting—Show high and low performance results (top ten). Apply business rules to focus attention on particular categories and measures and quickly identify trends or issues.

Relative time periods—Create reports such as Fiscal Year to Date and subset data using relative time periods. Define the selection once (e.g. current month) and apply it, independent of changes in the report.

Email integration—Send the current report to others as an email attachment—Excel, Word, Adobe PDF, or flat file.

Work offline—Save a copy of the cube and viewer locally, and continue the analysis completely disconnected from the network.

Product Brochure: Actuate Analytics Option

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Actuate iServer Scales to Thousands of UsersProfiles, cubes, and reports are stored as objects in the Actuate iServer Encyclopedia and the capability to manage these objects is provided through the iServer Management Console. As a result, Actuate Analytics leverages all common services available in the iServer—scalability, security, scheduling, web-services integration, notification, delivery, versioning, logging, and maintenance.

The Cube Factory—The Actuate Analytics Option adds the cube generation engine, called the Analytics Cube Factory to the iServer. This factory is a multi-threaded, scalable engine that generates highly compressed cubes from the definition in the cube profile. Cube profiles are published to the Actuate iServer through the Analytics Designer or the Management Console. Using the scheduling capabilities common to all Actuate products within iServer, cube generation can be scheduled to occur at any time. The resulting cube output will be stored in the encyclopedia where it can be accessed and shared with other users.

Persistent and transient cubes—Cubes can be scheduled or be generated on demand. When in Active Portal or a custom application, a user simply clicks on a URL that references a cube profile, and the cube is generated on-demand. This cube can be transient (temporary) or persistent (cached) and stored in the encyclopedia.

Cube parameterization (SQL)—When defining a cube profile, IT can parameterize the SQL query that returns the cube’s data. This is accomplished by defining an external query file that is referenced inside the cube profile. So during a cube creation process, for example, specifying “South” as a parameter value would restrict data to that region.

Offline Mobility Improves Personal Productivity and Increases Information UtilityActuate Analytics offers each user the unique ability to work offline with their own personal cube. This translates into improved productivity for sales and marketing analysts, frequent travelers, and telecommuters. Working offline provides the freedom for users to browse the cube during non-

business hours—even on airline flights—time that can improve the familiarity with the information and the quality of the analysis.

Advanced integration—Advanced Actuate Analytics installations can combine all of the specialization techniques mentioned above to deliver a truly dynamic Enterprise Reporting Application. Enterprise Reporting Application users can request specific dimensions and measures from within a web application and submit a request for analysis. In the background, a dynamic cube profile is created that invokes a parameterized SQL query which passes the user’s data access privileges as a parameter. Then, the on-demand cube is generated, while a branded, novice-level Analytics Viewer is delivered to the user along with the new cube. Included in the Viewer is a default Cube Report that displays a table that includes the dimensions and the first measure in the request. This custom scenario can be repeated thousands of times per day, depending on the application.

Low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)The ability to tailor and integrate the end-user experience makes Actuate Analytics a very compelling addition to the Actuate product family.

Embedded Analysis—Actuate Analytics offers seamless integration with Enterprise Reporting Applications simply by including URLs that refer to

Product Brochure: Actuate Analytics Option

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information in the iServer. The Information Delivery API, a SOAP-based, web services interface can schedule cube builds, retrieve cube reports, and manage cube access rights—anywhere URLs are supported including web pages, applications and reports.

Private branding—The Analytics Viewer supports private-branding to meet an organization’s specific corporate and distribution requirements, or to integrate seamlessly into existing applications.

Microsoft Analysis Services—The Actuate Analytics Viewer connects over the network to cubes defined with Microsoft® SQL Server Analysis Services. Access is provided using Microsoft’s OLE DB for OLAP (ODBO) standard, and is governed by a profile specific to Analysis Services. Organizations can use this capability to create very large cubes that summarize large volumes of information, across many dimensions and measures. This feature is limited to the Microsoft Windows platform.

Companion To e.AnalysisActuate Analytics provides a powerful complement to Actuate’s e.Analysis, delivering a common interface to users of each product as they explore and analyze their data.

e.Analysis provides a powerful interactive visualization capability for Actuate e.Reports and Actuate Query results. After reviewing the results in a standard report, users can invoke the e.Report’s Smart Search feature to initiate an e.Analysis session, selecting the columns of data to be analyzed directly from the report. e.Analysis automatically constructs a cube based on the selected data and delivers the viewer and the new cube back to the user. e.Analysis is an ideal complement to Actuate Analytics as e.Analysis can facilitate ad hoc exploration to help users define new cubes and new cube reports to be formally developed and delivered by Analytics.

Actuate Analytics is more formal in its purpose than e.Analysis. Typically, IT or a power user will design what might be a complex, multi-dimensional summary of large amounts of data, and then schedule the Analytics cube creation. This cube will then mature as users define, share, and refine reports

for that cube. These reports are also published to the iServer, are refreshed as the cube data is refreshed, and are available for consumption by thousands of users.

The root difference in the two products is the sourcing of the data, the control over the cube definition, extensibility, and the ability to save and share reports from that cube. The table above compares the two products.

Product Brochure: Actuate Analytics Option

Actuate Corporation2207 Bridgepointe ParkwaySuite 500San Mateo, CA 94404

Tel: (888) 422-8828Web: http://www.actuate.com

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System RequirementsSystem requirements vary with options chosen. For a system analysis based on your specific needs, please contact an Actuate expert at 1-800-914-2259 (US & Canada) or contact us by email. You can also contact one of our offices worldwide.

For More Information To get more information about interactive Web reporting, please contact an Actuate expert at 1-800-914-2259 (US & Canada) or contact us by email. You can also contact one of our offices worldwide.

Product Brochure: Actuate Analytics Option

Feature Actuate Analytics e.Analysis

Data source RDBMS, XML, applications, flat files, MS Analysis Services

e.Report Data, Actuate Query Results

Cube definition Cube Designer provides granular control over Cube Profile

Automatic

Extensive OLAP Analysis Yes Yes

Report definition Cube Viewer builds and saves reports Export view to MS Office

Work offline Yes Yes

Save reports Yes No

Schedule Cube Yes No

Customize Viewer Formats, branding, colors, experience levels

Colors, branding, formats

Integration Embed in Enterprise Reporting Applications, drill to detail navigation, Web-services scheduling, parameterized SQL, adaptive cubes

Embed in Enterprise Reporting Applications