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Arbutus Software offers easy to implement solutions that support direct access,
analysis and conversion and reporting of data from a wide variety of data sources
and data types, including the most complex legacy and mainframe file structures.
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Click on a part of the diagram to navigate to the details.
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Analyzer provides an interface with many pre-built analytics
that allows sophisticated analysis without any reliance on IT personnel.
Depending on your requirements, the analysis can be done interactively,
or set up to run in an automated environment.
Unlike traditional data manipulation tools such as Access or Excel,
Analyzer's user interface is specifically designed to address the realities
of directly accessing legacy data.
Analyzer utilizes a familiar spreadsheet interface to browse, analyze or
report on the data, making it appear as though it were already in a data warehouse.
> Download Arbutus Desktop Technology information (pdf).
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Analyzer is capable of accessing many different formats:
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Local data files include flat text files,
print image or report files (text files with headers and footers),
MS Access, MS Excel (also ranges), dBASE, ODBC (e.g. MS SQL, Oracle, Sybase),
XML, and even PDF files.
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Almost any database table can be accessed as an ODBC data source.
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HTML tables or pages, relational databases with customisable queries,
and SAP™ data are accessible through the
Windows Data Engine (see below).
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Legacy data such as AS/400, DB2, IMS, VSAM, ISAM, sequential (QSAM),
Flat files and AS/400 data can all be integrated into Analyzer via the
Mainframe or AS/400 Data Engines (see below).
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One of the most complex data files to access, are report files
Analyzer facilitates this by letting you define the areas for headers,
footers, detail lines and individual areas for fields.
Previously created definitions can be reused to
import similar files or to modify the definitions.
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All data sources, including the imported PDF file, are displayed in a
spreadsheet-like format. The display is read-only to
avoid unintentional modifications during analysis.
All accessible datasources, procedures and workspaces are
organised via actual folders in the Project Overview.
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Analyzer provides many options to validate the imported data. One of these
is the VERIFY command which verifies the content of each field based
on the declared type.
The Log with hyperlinks displays errors in text and hex code.
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STATISTICS, one of the pre-built analysis commands provides a very quick
overview of numerical and date fields.
In the illustration two million records have been processed in seconds.
Analyzer has no data size limit!
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Other simple pre-built analysis commands include
COUNT to verify the number of imported records and
TOTAL to verify the total amount of a numeric field.
All commands and results are logged, leaving a clear activity trail.
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Identifying suspect records is childsplay with the built-in filtering techniques.
In the illustration, a Global filter is used to identify the
31 faulty records out of the 2 016 164 records with a negative quantity
or incorect line total.
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Grouping commands include CLASSIFY, STRATIFY, AGE Analyis,
CROSSTABulate and SUMMARIZE.
Sales figures per region, invoice totals per vendor, number of logins per user account, etc.
Any of these questions can be answered with these commands.
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Different data sources can be combined in three ways:
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COMPARE to identify changes between two versions
(e.g. vendor lists, employee lists)
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JOIN to create a new table, based on two data sources
(e.g. vendors and invoices, login attempts and employees)
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RELATE to combine an unlimited number of data sources
(e.g. for display or reporting purposes)
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The built-in BENFORD analysis, is one of the ways in which
data trends could be identified.
Possible anomalies may jump out in the drill-down graphical display of the analysis.
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Unlike spreadsheet software, Analyzer will not let you modify data!
In the table layout an unlimited number of virtual columns or computed fields
can be added to verify computations, create new values, format text,
create checksum, etc.
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Data can be exported into many different popular data formats for reporting,
printing, interfacing with other applications or further processing.
Exported data can be limited in scope (fields) and content (records).
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Analyzer's advanced export features can export data to specific sheets
in MS Excel, leaving other sheets untouched as well as the formatting of the exported
sheet.
Management reporting, KPI's, dashboards, etc
need to be formatted only once and can then be updated with new data.
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Resources can be shared with colleagues within Analyzer itself,
without need for additional software or licenses.
Similarly, frequently-used resources can be shared within all your projects
(e.g. employees, exchange rates, list of company codes).
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LegacyLink™ marries an ODBC driver with the data access and definition
capabilities of Arbutus Analyzer. All data sources that have been defined with Arbutus Analyzer can
be accessed using LegacyLink. This enables data that Arbutus Data Engines can access
to be exposed as a virtual data mart.
Any application that can read ODBC can now directly access and integrate
your legacy data. Even though the data may be physically disparate.
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MS Excel, MS Access, reporting tools, data mining, intranet pages, dashboard, etc,
can access ODBC data sources and through Legacy Link™,
access user dialog boxes, analysis results and raw data sources including legacy data.
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Legacy Link™ is extremely simple to configure.
The software installation will configure a new system ODBC data source.
The user simply points it to the Arbutus project to expose.
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The Arbutus Data Engines have been designed to help organizations address some
of their most challenging data delivery and analysis requirements.
The Arbutus Data Engines reside on the native platform enabling fast,
efficient data access and query processing support.
There are four types of data engines:
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The Mainframe Data Engine communicates directly with
Analyzer and LegacyLink to provide direct, real-time access to all
data sources like DB2, IMS, VSAM and sequential (QSAM) flat files.
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The Windows Data Engine is used to stage data from other
platforms, perform transparent joining and comparing of data from
disparate sources, share data sources and schedule automated analysis tasks.
The illustrations below are from this type of server.
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The AS/400 Data Engine communicates directly with Arbutus Analyzer
and LegacyLink to provide direct, real-time access to all data sources
like DB2, IFS, Flat and Spool files.
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The Linux Data Engine is used to stage historical data or data
from other platforms, offloading CPU cycles from production platforms.
> Download Arbutus Data Engine Technology information (pdf).
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The Windows Data Engine can access HTML pages and tables.
This is a perfect way of making sure the most recent information
(e.g. exchange rates, prices, weblogs, etc) is available
during analysis and reporting.
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Just like all other data sources, HTML data tables are available via
the Project Navigator.
The icon of the table indicates that the table resides on the server
rather than the PC.
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Procedures, like scripts or batch files, contain lists of commands to execute.
Procedures can be used in both Analyzer desktop and Windows Data Engine. Because servers
are typically online 24x7 automated procedures are best scheduled to run on servers.
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Automated procedures can create reports or overviews in the form of new tables,
residing on the server and shared within the team.
Alternatively, procedures can create output data files and
start external commands (e.g. zip, FTP upload) for further processing.
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The built-in email feature can send the results, (exception) reports,
management overviews or dashboards to the end user.
Exports to MS Excel refresh only data, so the layout and formatting of the
spreadsheet can be prepared beforehand.
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Arbutus Demonstrations
The Arbutus software suite offers many more
functionalities, which we would gladly demonstrate.
Please contact us to schedule a live demonstration.
> Contact Sepia Solutions for a live demonstration.
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