P2 Energy Solutions Introduces the Excalibur Report Studio

P2 Energy Solutions announces the release of Excalibur Report Studio (ERS). ERS is a desktop application that will completely transform the way that business users access, analyze and report data out of the Excalibur Energy Management System. Built upon the Microsoft .NET framework, ERS is a tool designed to extract data directly from the UniData database and structure the data in a normalized format, so that third-party reporting packages can be utilized to deliver the information to the end-user and provide greater business intelligence capabilities. As a starting point, ERS is integrated with Crystal Reports® Developer XI from Business Objects. "Crystal Reports is probably the most popular reporting tool on the market," said Mark Eikermann, senior vice president of development for P2 Energy Solutions . "It made perfect sense to choose Crystal as the preferred report writer under which to build ERS."

The new and unique characteristic of ERS is its direct interaction with the UniData database . In the past, companies had external access to UniData using an ODBC access layer. This not only created more complexity, but these tools were confining from a reporting standpoint. Using proprietary technology to transform the data into a normalized view, ERS eliminates the complexity to bridge the gap between UniData and today's popular reporting applications, opening additional opportunities and capabilities to all users. ERS is architected so that knowledge workers can utilize the full capabilities of today's best reporting tools which are richly endowed with charts, graphs and analytical capabilities.

"ERS will be particularly attractive to our customer base for a number of core reasons," says Darrell Jones, executive vice president, P2 Energy Solutions . "The first is the robust flexibility of the product including powerful analytical capabilities, presentation quality appearance of the reports, and multiple report deployment options; the second, a dramatic improvement in speed compared to ODBC access; and third, the reduced amount of maintenance because ERS operates directly on UniData data tables using the native dictionary definitions (including any customer unique dictionary items) which eliminates ODBC schema administration."

The potential of ERS is well recognized by existing Excalibur clients, who are enthusiastic to be on the vanguard and participate in the beta testing scheduled to conclude by July 1. Because ERS is designed to directly access the UniData database, the tool is product agnostic. ERS can be valuable for any application running on UniData, not only Excalibur. "There is nothing like ERS on the market," continued Mark Eikermann. "ERS will work with any application that uses the UniData database which greatly expands the potential market. That said, our first focus is to continue to add value for our Excalibur clients with well thought out research and development efforts."