Information Builders Integrates AJAX

Information Builders Inc. will provide a Bindows AJAX Framework within the WebFOCUS enterprise business intelligence (BI) platform development tool suite in the June release, a company executive said Thursday.

Developers have lacked the ease of Windows-product functionality in thin-client tools, said Kevin Quinn, Information Builders vice president of production marketing. The move gives users a Windows-like development approach in a thin-client environment, making it easier for developers to manage and build reports.

Information Builders first combined JavaScript and XML when it recently released the technology in Active Reports, providing analytics in the reports based on the data. The reports tie-in data, allowing users to re-sort, filter, chart, and calculate.

Future Information Builders product releases will integrate Ajax more heavily, Quinn said. "Expect to see interactivity with reports and output users and developers receive," he said. "Today, people bring reports back from in an Excel format to interact with the data. But if you do it that way, Excel is required on your desktop."

Ajax and XML will enable Information Builders to provide functionality in reports not possible without Microsoft Corp. Excel. The technology won't require users to have the software on their desktop.Earlier this week Information Builders unveiled a software tool developed with Google Inc. to assist customers who access internal company data use the Google search engine. WebFocus Intelligent Search allows users to enter keywords through a Google-like Web page, tapping into structured data stored in corporate databases, previously inaccessible to the Google search engine.