FASTER DATA ACCESS by Rick Whiting

INFORMATIONWEEK, January 18, 1999

CROSS ACCESS, a software company based in Santa Clara, California, is now supplying SeriesFour middleware for corporate usage. SeriesFour gives a company the ability to access data and metadata in its legacy systems using relational databases, data marts, data warehouses, and ERP systems in close to real-time. Kawasaki Motors is currently using SeriesFour to link VSAM and IMS files from an IBM 9672 mainframe to a Microsoft Access database. The key to SeriesFour is its query processor that has the capability to translate ODBC SQL queries into queries for systems that utilize IDMS, VSAM and IMS files. This query processor capability eradicates the demand for COBOL programmers who can write queries to access VSAM, IMS and IDMS files in legacy systems. Finally, SeriesFour offers a corporation the advantage of speed in linking legacy data. CROSS ACCESS President and CEO, George Langan, says that these legacy data links can be developed in as little as two hours.

With the abundance of corporations using ERP systems and looking to build data marts and data warehousing systems, SeriesFour is a vital resource that will save huge amounts of time and money. Companies can now avoid the process of finding COBOL programmers and paying them small fortunes to link legacy data. This software empowers companies to truly leverage the advantages gained by implementing an ERP system or constructing a data mart or data warehouse. Also, due to the savings in time and money, companies are more likely to implement ERP systems or migrate to a relational database knowing that they can bypass the difficulties in linking legacy data. Corporations are more likely to implement state-of-the-art systems with the availability of products like SeriesFour.

Patrick Rago