Agility in Accessing Data Sources

Below is the transcript of a Webinar hosted by InetSoft on the topic of New Features in Version 11 of InetSoft's Style Intelligence BI Software. The presenters are Mark Flaherty, CMO at InetSoft, and Navish Javed, Product Manager at InetSoft.

Mark Flaherty (MF): Speaking more about agile business intelligence, agility also comes from being able to make quick changes on the backend being able to bring in new data sources to see if these are the ones that you want to bring into a data warehouse or whether you want to just keep them standalone as operational data sources, our software connects them just the same.

In terms of robustness, we have built our solution to be enterprise grade, and that means being able to deploy to large numbers of users or accessing large datasets over a distributed architecture. We support clustering and load balancing and have our own technology, which we call data grid cache, which helps speed up access to large data sets and supports large number of users.

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BI Product Overview

Next I just wanted to provide a product overview. Style Intelligence is our flagship business intelligence software product, which includes all of our technologies. It's built on a data access platform. Data Block is the terminology we use for bringing data from different data sources, again it can be almost any data source out there, whether it’d be an operational data store or a CRM or financial solution, it can be data warehouses, even flat files and spreadsheets, Web services, what have you.

And on top of this data access layer, you can build a visualization. That can be your dashboards and your interactive analyses. You can also use our very mature reporting capabilities, which we call our publishing capabilities; and that’s good for creating those paginated reports, pushing or pulling them as needed.

To give you a little bit of preview what you will see in the demo, this slide is giving a little idea of working with Data Blocks. We have our data modeler there that comes with the application, and that is what you would use to set up your connections to your data sources initially. And then as you are actually trying to build reports or dashboards then you are using a drag & drop design environment which is Web based. This is where you select the different fields that you want to use and be able to visualize in dashboard report.

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How Data Block Technology Speeds Up Dashboard Report Development

InetSoft's data block technology is a powerful feature that significantly accelerates the development of dashboard reports by streamlining the process of data integration and visualization. At its core, data blocks are modular components that encapsulate data access, transformation, and presentation logic into reusable building blocks. These blocks can be easily configured and interconnected to assemble complex data queries and visualizations without the need for extensive coding or database expertise. By abstracting away the complexity of data manipulation and visualization, data blocks empower dashboard developers to focus on delivering insights and value to end-users more efficiently.

One of the key advantages of InetSoft's data block technology is its flexibility and adaptability to diverse data sources and formats. Whether accessing structured databases, unstructured data sources, or cloud-based applications, data blocks provide a unified interface for accessing and transforming data regardless of its underlying source or format. This versatility enables developers to quickly incorporate data from multiple sources into their dashboard reports, eliminating the need for manual data wrangling and integration efforts. As a result, dashboard development cycles are greatly accelerated, and organizations can derive insights from their data more rapidly.

Furthermore, InetSoft's data block technology promotes reusability and consistency across dashboard reports by allowing developers to create and manage a library of predefined data blocks. These reusable components encapsulate common data access patterns, calculations, and visualizations, enabling developers to leverage existing blocks and customize them as needed to meet specific reporting requirements. This not only speeds up dashboard development but also ensures consistency and accuracy in data representation across different reports and dashboards within an organization. Additionally, by centralizing the management of data blocks, organizations can enforce data governance policies and maintain a single source of truth for their data assets.

Overall, InetSoft's data block technology revolutionizes dashboard report development by empowering developers to rapidly integrate, transform, and visualize data from diverse sources with ease. By simplifying and automating repetitive tasks, data blocks streamline the development process, reduce time-to-insight, and enable organizations to make data-driven decisions more efficiently. With its focus on flexibility, reusability, and consistency, data blocks represent a key innovation in dashboard development that accelerates the delivery of actionable insights to stakeholders across the organization.