RMACS DWARF

  RMACS DWARF Presentation

What is RMACS DWARF ?

DWARF is the latest addition to TriSystems' RMACS reporting database for the IMACS and IMACS Evo reinsurance administration software. It is a sophisticated yet simple to use web based reporting and analysis tool allowing IMACS users to build, organise and run their own reports from within a web browser window, as well as allowing rapid interactive queries over the data and "drill down" analysis over "OLAP cubes".

Why should I use it?

Standard RMACS 7 builds and stores reports as SQL Server tables or views which users can then access via desktop productivity tools such as Excel or Access (using ODBC). This is effective but has certain drawbacks, such as:

• Once there are more than a few reports, it becomes cumbersome to find the report you want as the desktop tools present a single (generally unsorted!) list of reports to pick from.
• Desktop tools are fairly limited in the amount of data they can cope with in any one report (either in number of columns or number of rows)
• Field selection and filtering in these tools is generally not very user friendly, and the user must know what data they are looking for before viewing the data (at the risk of a tedious process of retrieving a large amount of data and then refining the selection)
• Custom queries designed by the user are not stored in a central repository and are therefore easily "lost"

RMACS DWARF represents a considerable improvement:

• Reports are organised in a "tree view" which is fully customisable, so they will always be easy to find, run and manage.
• Report data is retrieved page by page into the browser window, with no particular limitation on the number of columns or number of rows that the report has. Paging through this data is very quick. Data can be exported to Excel at the click of a button.
• An intuitive "query by example" approach allows users to rapidly filter standard reports "on the fly"; the selection of columns to include or exclude is equally straightforward.
• Once users have designed a report to their satisfaction, it can be saved in the report repository for future re-use; reports can be made "public" (for use by all other users, or a certain group of users) or "private", only for use by the person who created them.

Further major benefits of RMACS DWARF include:

• The ability to explore and query an OLAP cube of the data brings unprecedented flexibility; rather than having to pre-define specific queries to retrieve key business metrics, the user can (starting at the highest level view) progressively drill down into more and more detailed representations of the data according to the nature of their enquiry (for example starting with the total year to date claims figure, drill down by reporting quarter, then by reporting month, then by class of business, etc, ending up with a transaction level view of the claims entries that underpin this)
• Being browser based, RMACS DWARF can be immediately deployed across the enterprise (no client software to load on PC's) and also does not require very powerful PC's, as all the processing happens on the RMACS server.
• Likewise, should there be a requirement to allow third parties (outside the enterprise) to view certain reports, these can be made available very simply.

What do I need in order to run RMACS DWARF?

RMACS DWARF requires a Microsoft SQL Server 2000 installation, including Microsoft Analysis Services and an instance of Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS). Client PC's require Microsoft Internet Explorer version 6.0 or more recent.