User:Richard Elvin/Draft article on DataPA

DataPA is a business intelligence tool used for generating dashboards and reports. It is primarily targeted at Progress / OpenEdge applications due to it's ability to connect to a Progress database using native technology (Progress AppServer).

Components
DataPA provides a Dashboard Designer and a Report Builder. These applications are built with Microsoft technology so are only available for Windows. The content generated with these tools can be viewed within the applications themselves, printed, exported or embedded within a 3rd party application. This content can also be "published" to DataPA Enterprise which is a Windows service and IIS application. This service can then be connected to from throughout an organisation allowing permitted users to view the content through their web browser, or mobile device. Finally there is a scheduler which allows reports to be run at a set time. The generated content can then be exported to a specific location or emailed to specified addresses. It can be set to only send the content if data is found and in this way can be used as an alert tool.

Connectivity
The main connectivity used by DataPA is through a Progress AppServer to a Progress database. Progress databases can be hosted on Windows, Linux or Unix. Progress has a "DataServer" product available which allows connections to non-Progress databases. It is therefore possible to produce a single report or dashboard in DataPA that pulls data from multiple Progress and/or non-Progress databases. Some versions of DataPA also provide for direct connections to SQL type databases.

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It is the only such tool able to do this, other business intelligence offerings can connect to Progress databases via ODBC but they tend to have poorer performance as they will be reading records from disk whereas DataPA can access Progress shared memory so will often be able to read records from memory.

Related Links

 * Corporate website