Simba TDWI XMLA Event a Success

Vancouver, BC - June 25, 2004 - Simba Technologies is pleased to announce that representatives from Dow Corning and Reuters presented their experiences as early adopters of XML for Analysis (XMLA) during a night school course at The Data Warehousing Institute's (TDWI's) World Conference on May 9 in Boston, MA. Facilitated by Simba Technologies, this event gave attendees insight into this new and evolving data connectivity standard and a perspective on the benefits it will offer their organization.

XMLA is a set of XML message interfaces that use the industry standard SOAP to define data access interaction between a client application and an analytical data provider working over the Internet. XMLA has achieved significant support within the business intelligence community. Its widespread adoption by many leading vendors has resulted in a momentum that will increasingly create new options for addressing data connectivity issues.

During presentation of the Dow Corning case study, attendees learned about Dow Corning's use of XMLA to connect its new web-based portal Xiameter to data stored in SAP Business Information Warehouse (BW) to make this information available to its supply chain. Key learning points conveyed during this presentation were as follows:

• XMLA is a key way to leverage your investment in SAP BW for supply chain information visibility
• Organizations can exploit the capabilities of XMLA using a variety of web-enabled tools available in the market today.

During presentation of the Reuters case study, attendees learned about Reuter's use of XMLA to connect a central Microsoft Analysis Services installation situated in London, England to thick client applications being used by geographically dispersed knowledge workers at sites in New York, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Singapore and Sao Paulo. Key learning points conveyed during this presentation were as follows:

• XMLA is a desirable alternative for providing remote access to centralized data
• In spite of limited bandwidth over a wide area network (WAN), XMLA can perform very well with use of compression and other optimizations

The following feedback was obtained from attendees who completed designated XMLA questionnaires upon completion of the event:

• All respondents represented the IT function within their respective organizations;
• Familiarity with XMLA prior to the event was mixed with more than 50% having no prior awareness of this standard;
• Over 95% of respondents indicated that XMLA would be beneficial to their business; and
• Approximately 40% of respondents indicated that XMLA could be used for a specific IT solution they are currently planning.

For more information on TDWI and the conference click here.

About XMLA

The XMLA Council is made up of a number of leading Business Intelligence and Business Performance Management software vendors that have announced their support and backing of the XMLA Specification, a set of XML message interfaces that use the industry standard SOAP to define data access interaction between a client application and an analytical data provider working over the Internet. The council has jointly published the XMLA Specification that allows corporate developers, third party tool vendors and other parties to query analytical data providers in a standard way. This new standard is expected to accelerate the adoption of Internet business intelligence software and increase the market for those technologies. To learn more about XMLA, please visit http://www.xmla.org.

About Simba

Simba Technologies is the recognized world leader in standards based data access products, solutions, and services. We deliver data connectivity and interoperability solutions to many of the world's leading companies on various platforms including Windows, Solaris and Linux. Our best-in-class products support multiple interfaces, including ODBC, JDBC, OLE DB, OLE DB for OLAP, XML for Analysis, ADO and ADO.NET.

For more information on Simba Technologies, please contact us.