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Weblication Technology

Author:  Hitesh Bhatnagar
Contributed by Brio Technology, Inc.

Weblication technology allows the management of confidential information that comes from anywhere within the organization (such as legacy, desktop, OLTP, and others). Information management includes the publication and access managed retrieval of disperse information formats and facilitates user access to all information from anywhere within the organization across an Intranet utilizing Weblication technology. There are several tools (ours is named Reports Crossroads) designed to facilitate and enable organizations to implement weblication publication and retrieval systems.

The most powerful of these tools are comprehensive server / browser report weblication systems to collect, manage, and deliver confidential information to users throughout the enterprise. They support Data Warehouse, domains, legacy reports, and all user desktop files, all with confidential access security at the report level.

It is the timely and consistent access to information that separates exceptional companies from the rest of the pack. CEO's, CIO's, and other senior executives must constantly seek tools facilitating the rapid deployment of mission critical information to all employees across the enterprise. Whether the information is related to quarterly sales revenues, current inventory status, new pricing, income statements, shipment details, or even status reports with attached spreadsheets, this information should be available on demand and around-the-clock, anywhere and anywhen. Information Warehouse technology allows this to be achieved.

Information technology departments often find it difficult, if not impossible, to distribute critical information across the enterprise in a timely manner. Weblication tools offer cost-effective solutions for distributing information to the entire enterprise using proven intranet and LAN technology and familiar browser interfaces.

Most competitive organizations have Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems (such as SAP, Oracle Apps, Baan or PeopleSoft). Many more have Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems and Data Warehouses or Data Marts. To free the information locked in their applications, leading companies have implemented OLAP and Querying tools to speed the generation of reports, but these solutions only serve a small fraction of the organization. Distributing information to the masses is impeded by the prohibitive cost and historical complexities of timely mass deployment.

Legacy information in the form of a report, document, or spreadsheet, is generated by diverse groups, often located at remote facilities. As a result, unified access to reports that exist in various formats and come from many locations stands as an operational challenge for any IT organization. Existing systems may be slow, but they sure are hard to use. Until now.

Weblication technology meets these IT demands head-on, empowering the enterprise by facilitating the flow of information. Some solutions are implemented to not only meet these challenges but to also be easy to use, secure, scalable and customizable. The architecture is usually flexible enough to allow the addition of new applications and reports as requirements grow without imposing organizational change.

80-20 Rule of Information Access

An organization typically uses several tools to generate reports. Some of the commonly used tools are WORD, EXCEL, Business Objects, Oracle Report Writer, SQR, etc. In such a multi-tool environment, a user is subjected to the repetitive steps of first locating changed reports files (awareness), then invoking the correct application, then finally telling that tool to view the specific file desired. Weblication technology provides access to the reports from different applications through one common interface. Users will not be required to 'learn' different tools to access information. Weblication technology web interface will be the only user interface users will need to use.

Multiple Formats

In the Weblication technology environment, the reports can be virtually of any format. Reports generated in PostScript, Text, Pdf, HTML, Audio, Video, SLK, GIF, JPEG, and any other application-specific formats can be accessed by users under the same common interface.

Information Security

Security is always one of the key concerns when providing access to information on the web. In Weblication technology, access to applications and reports are provided through identification, authentication and authorization domains. Every user requiring access to Weblication technology is defined with a unique login-id and password in an authentication domain. The security architecture is modular and configurable. It is possible to replace Weblication technology authentication model with third party modules using Weblication technology security API. Similarly, the authorization domain of Weblication technology can be populated from other data sources within an organization.

User Tools

End User Publishing: Any end users may publish reports. The user publish feature lets the user-base leverage the Intranet technology to distribute reports developed by them to others in the organization. Users are empowered to publish, submit to a moderator, or are prevented from report submission at a report group level, thus allowing workgroups to communicate via Weblication technology.

System Administration

Weblication technology administration tool provides the ability to define and customize the implementation environment. The user interface to this tool is browser based. A Super-User defines the administrators for each application. The ADMIN tool allows application administrators to manage their applications, including authorization domains within their applications, reports, users, user profiles, search keywords, etc. The administrators use the Control Center to assign or change users' authorization. New users are created by application administrators and are granted access to applications and reports in the security domain.

Automatic Report Updates

In most cases, production reports are produced on a predictable schedule. As a result, the data content of many of the reports available on Weblication technology web server will change at regular intervals. The frequency of these changes may vary from a few hours to a few months, depending on the type of data and organization practices. Weblication technology batch interface allows administrators to define report source locations, and automatically update the reports. Likewise, an on-demand publishing capability is fully implemented via the user interface, allowing non-scheduled reports to be integrated into the Information Warehouse.

Scalability

The architecture of Weblication technology is scalable. Based on the number of reports, applications, geographical distribution of user base and the speeds of the Intranet environment, organizations can scale the components of Weblication technology to provide better performance to access reports.

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