NRG+ matches the combination of key features that has made NRG one of the most powerful and adaptable Business Intelligence tools in the market today. In addition, not only has the development environment provided by Java allowed us to greatly enhance the look and feel and user interface, but also to position the new NRG+ product as a strong solution for web applications.
- Ease of Use
- Client Server
- Open Product
- Database Connectivity
- Operating Systems
- Output Options
- Integration
NRG+ is very easy to use. Powerful dictionary features such as composites, constants and table includes combined with NRG+'s virtual file processing hide the complexity of an applications data structures from the user. This means that the user can simply concentrate on designing their report. NRG+ has a comprehensive list of functions that allow the user to manipulate the data in any way required. The product has an automatic "read ahead" feature that allows flexible report formatting and advanced functions such as "percent of total" and "select on total" that other products do not support.
Whilst many client only solutions offer ODBC/JDBC connection as a way of accessing data on the server this introduces additional costs for ODBC/JDBC licences and significant network overhead as large volumes of data are transferred across the network. These two factors render the client only solution ineffective when larger databases are involved.
NRG+ can process its data on the client PC or in conjunction with the NRG+ SERVER giving maximum operational flexibility and maximum performance. Server processing greatly improves performance, eliminating the network inefficiencies, as only the design details are passed from the client to the server (taking only seconds) and only the processed data (the .RLT file containing only the report output) is passed back to the client.
The market for report writers is heavily fragmented by more than 25 operating systems and more than 40 database variants. NRG+ has been uniquely designed to address all market segments and provide native database support to give both performance benefits and full support for all data types within any given database.
There is this same OPEN approach when considering database connectivity. NRG+ uses native database access where possible to gain maximum performance when processing data.
This is achieved through NRG+ filehandlers. The product supports multiple filehandlers so data from two different databases can be combined onto one report. NRG+'s virtual file processing provides a constant high level of data access support ensuring maximum functionality irrespective of the file management system being used.
NRG+ has been designed with portability in mind and is available on all popular client and server operating systems where a Java Virtual Machine can be deployed . This is particularly important in the corporate environment where there may be more than one operating system in use.
NRG+ is particularly flexible in terms of the many options of output format. Output from a report can be sent to server or client printers, disk files, directly into EXCEL or to be viewed on a PC screen via the viewer component of NRG+. The viewer component is very powerful in giving control over viewing of larger reports on screen.
The 'tree view' of the report allows an end user to go directly to any particular part of a report instead of having to scroll down the whole report to get to the required information. Search facilities and the ability to print selected pages from a report further enhance this feature.
The NRG+ design concept delivers the user interface and the report writing engine as a number of separate components. This allows NRG+ to provide a high level of integration with the software application. All the report writing engine functions can be accessed using command line processing. This is particularly important for the more sophisticated business applications where it is necessary to keep control of the reporting function.