What sort of data can I use with Ascentra?

Ascentra works primarily with data contained in tables and views in a relational database such as Oracle or DB2. Customised versions of Ascentra are available from some of our business partners for access to data in other specialised databases. 

How does Ascentra communicate with data sources?

Ascentra can use ODBC or ADO (ActiveX Data Objects) to communicate with a variety of databases, including Microsoft Access, SQL Server, Oracle, Informix and DB2. All you need is a suitable ODBC driver or OLE DB Provider for your database. 

Does Ascentra work over the web?

Ascentra is a client-server application. The Ascentra client runs locally on your PC, and can use local data sources, remote data sources on a server, or data sources available over a web server via Remote Data Services (RDS). 

Why did Firbeck develop Ascentra?

Things are always changing in the Microsoft arena. With the arrival of OLE 2, everything became much more open, and some really useful products such as Excel became available as components you could fit together as you needed. You could open an Excel spreadsheet in your Visual Basic program, for example, or create an Access table from a Delphi application. We recognised that a suite of query and reporting components would be really useful to our customers, and to our developers too, and we looked around to see what was available. When we realised how little this technology had been used in the query and reporting area, we decided to build the components ourselves.

What components does Ascentra provide?

Ascentra is essentially based on a three tier architectural model - client components do the query building and data presentation while a data server contacts the data source, executes the queries and the returns data to the client. The data source at that third level would often be a relational database such as Oracle or SQL Server, but with Ascentra it doesn't have to be. The data server can run on a LAN server, or on the same machine as the client components, and the database itself could be located on a completely separate machine.

How does the query building work?

Ascentra uses a metastore to hold information about the database. A metastore is a visual representation of the database, showing the tables and the columns identified by friendly, business names.  The metastore also shows the ways in which the tables are related. When the user chooses the data for their query, Ascentra translates their choices into commands the database will understand, usually SQL.

Can Ascentra use non-SQL data sources?

Yes, that's part of the power of the approach. Our query builder can  generate commands in a data sources' own native language, and we have a number of data servers which use different ways of conversing with their data source. SQL is obviously very popular, and our ODBC Server uses Open Database Connectivity to converse with ODBC-compliant data sources. Our AS server communicates with ASTRAC's Application System product in AS's own native language, though, and we are working on other data server components. Some data sources just don't fit in with SQL and ODBC, and Ascentra can open ad-hoc query facilities to this data for the first time.

How is the metastore created?

Anyone can set up a metastore, but it is best done by someone who understands the structure of the database. Metastores are usually stored centrally, perhaps on a local server, and used by any number of users. Ascentra provides easy facilities for building a metastore. You just choose the tables you are interested in from a list and drop them on the metastore area. You can move them about, add friendly business names, change properties, change the column properties (such as the display width, colour or font). Ascentra will detect any obvious relationships between the tables automatically, or you can define the relationships manually, all by pointing and clicking.

How will Ascentra develop in the future?

Firbeck is now hard at work on new .NET reporting technologies. Watch this space for an announcement in the second quarter of 2006.