SAS Bridges the Enterprise Intelligence Information Gap with Open Metadata; SAS System 9 Will Allow Metadata to Be Shared and Exchanged across All Computing Platforms

CARY, N.C., Nov. 4, 2002 -- SAS, the leader in business intelligence, is taking the lead in enabling enterprise systems to easily exchange and share key information that can affect a company's bottom line. SAS System 9, the latest version of SAS software, will solve a common problem among database administrators trying to integrate and manage metadata from various sources.

Defined as information that describes other data, metadata acts like a "bridge" that connects various information systems. As one of the first business intelligence vendors to announce full compliance with the Common Warehouse Metamodel (CWM) standard, SAS is pioneering the open metadata initiative through its alliance with Meta Integration Technology Inc. (MITI). Supporting an open metadata architecture allows users to exchange metadata freely between a range of products from different vendors, minimizing the risk and cost associated with maintaining a variety of software environments.

"The upcoming release of SAS' System 9 software will be CWM-compliant and will take full advantage of our alliance with MITI," said Keith Collins, SAS' chief technology officer. "Data modelers, database designers, data warehouse administrators, and corporate portal developers and managers will enjoy lower implementation costs by extending metadata interoperability across all computing platforms and environments, including the Web. This improved foundation will allow our customers to better address their dynamic technology environments - ultimately resulting in more flexible business intelligence solutions."

"Our alliance with MITI and the compliance with CWM enables SAS to provide an open intelligence architecture," explained Tho Nguyen, director of data management strategy at SAS. "Our customers can capture and integrate metadata from various vendors - such as Business Objects or Informatica - through MITI's Meta Integration Model Bridge (MIMB) product. This metadata can then be utilized to easily execute business intelligence, data warehousing or enterprise performance management implementations at lower cost."

"Although the Common Warehouse Metamodel standard has not nearly achieved implementation critical mass, and like many standards, offers a least-common-denominator framework, we still believe it to be irresponsible of data warehouse vendors to ignore the standard," said Doug Laney, vice president, META Group. "CWM remains the single best hope for enterprises to interchange metadata freely among tools, leading to reduced maintenance costs and improved implementation times."

CWM - a common, scalable metamodel standard

SAS is committed to open standards and is a key member of the Object Management Group (OMG), which established the CWM standard. CWM is built on three existing standards - OMG's Unified Modeling Language (UML), the Extensible Markup Language (XML) and OMG's XML Metadata Interchange (XMI). CWM enables company's to gather critical data required for business decision making by establishing a common, scalable metamodel that encompasses the extraction, transformation, transportation, loading, integration, and analysis phases of data warehouse and business intelligence projects.

Business and technical communities use metadata to better facilitate the complete life cycle of enterprise data and content on the Internet and Intranet with seamless interoperability. Metadata answers questions of where the data is stored, how it is used and why it was created. In addition, metadata helps combine Web data with information collected offline for comprehensive analysis.

About MITI

Incorporated in 1997, Meta Integration Technology, Inc. (MITI) is a privately held startup based in Silicon Valley. MITI is focused on providing tools for data and metadata movement solutions. MITI has established numerous partnerships in both the government and industry sectors, including with the DoD Health Affairs, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Computer Associates, NCR, Rational Software Corporation, SAS, Sybase and Sun MicroSystems. MITI is also involved with several relevant standards, including the Object Management Group (OMG) as a domain member (CWM and UML XMI), and the latest HL7 standard for XML based integration in the health care sector.

About SAS

SAS is the market leader in providing a new generation of business intelligence software and services that create true enterprise intelligence. SAS solutions are used at more than 39,000 sites - including 98 of the top 100 businesses on the Fortune 500 - to develop more profitable relationships with customers and suppliers; to enable better, more accurate and informed decisions; and to drive organizations forward. SAS is the only vendor that completely integrates leading data warehousing, analytics and traditional BI applications to create intelligence from massive amounts of data. For more than 25 years, SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know(R). Visit us at www.sas.com.

SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. (R) indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies. Copyright (C) 2002 SAS Institute Inc. Cary, NC, USA. All rights reserved.

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