Hi,

(I hope this is the right group to post this. If not I apologize and
would appreciate pointers.)

We have a Websphere Applicaiton server for our application. We plan to
have a database that is part relational and part star on DB2 UDB. We
will need an OLAP tool and may use BRIO.

Some questions on this approach:

1. What is the best way to access the OLAP schema from Java (we plan
to use hibernate but are concerned about its suitability for star
schemas).
Some things that I could think of are:
- Use hibernate on the star schema (not sure if this is the best)
- Create as many materialized views as necessary and use hibernate
- Use java objects running on the DBs JVM (db optimized jvm implying
better performance?)


2. Is Brio the right tool to use for this scenario?
I ask because we can't have direct integration with the J2EE
applicaiton server (We have to give the user a different login page to
brio to see the reports. But they may take hours to produce.)

3. What are your experiences in combining star and relational tables
in the same database?

4. Any thoughts on using DB2 OLAP server? Apparently it has reporting
capabilities and Java support, but unsure if it has any advantages
over Brio.

Thanks in advance,
Naga

Hi Naga,

questions above, but
an end user perspective. Ask them.
query tools usually can deal with it.
Essbase sold by IBM. Essbase is a multidimensional database. Brio also can
interface Essbase. Essbase's reporting functionality is mainly Excel-based
and adresses mainly ad-hoc-reporting and analysis. Deciding for or against
Essbase should be done based on end user requirements and a selection
process based on technical and end user requirements.

Kind regards,

Joerg