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SAS INSTITUTE ANNOUNCES SUPPORT FOR MICROSOFT ENTERPRISE SQL SERVER & REPOSITORY Agreement Extends Commitment to Development of Enterprise Data Warehouse Platform SAS Institute has announced a new alliance with Microsoft, designed to enhance the range of enterprise data warehousing solutions available on the Microsoft NT platform. Building on the two companies existing relationship through the Microsoft Data Warehouse alliance, SAS software will now support both the Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise edition 6.5 development platform, and the Microsoft Repository. The move will be welcomed by many organisations in the UK, who are increasingly looking for enhanced vendor support for their data warehousing initiatives. Demand for enterprise applications on the Windows NT server is growing fast, as is the need to integrate NT with legacy systems. SAS software facilitates this process, enabling users to combine data from multiple and disparate sources with ease across the enterprise. With the combined SAS/Microsoft solution, enterprise customers are able to benefit from a cost-effective choice of scaleable, robust environments for mission critical applications. SAS Institute's support for the Microsoft Repository confirms the company's commitment to open standards and a common metadata interchange standard. SAS/Warehouse Administrator software is already used to manage all aspects of the enterprise data warehouse from the mainframe to the desktop. By extending the functionality of this product to the Microsoft Repository, customers are able to choose the most appropriate platform and data store for their enterprise data warehouse and data exploitation, while reducing the cost and complexity of managing the administration and programming of enterprise data warehouse systems. NatWest Insurance Services (NWIS), based in Bristol, UK, is an early adopter of a combined SAS/Microsoft solution. Julie Pratten, Manager, Management Information Project at NatWest Insurance Services, commented: "We're actually the first SAS/Warehouse Administrator software site in the UK and bought the module specifically to assist in the extract, transformation and loading of data from an operational SQL Server database into our data warehouse. We're pleased to see closer links between SAS Institute and Microsoft - for organisations such as ours, where resources to implement a data warehousing project are limited, it's vital to automate the process wherever possible. The combination of SAS/Warehouse Administrator software and our existing Microsoft NT/SQL server architecture has proved very successful, doing just that." "SAS Institute is a recognised industry leader in enterprise data warehouse development and data exploitation software," said Karen Green, SQL Server product manager, Microsoft Limited. "Together, we offer robust, enterprise solutions with SQL and support NT/BackOffice as a complete, integrated platform." "SAS Institute has always worked to create an open computing environment, letting customers choose the most appropriate platform and data store for their enterprise data warehouse and data exploitation," commented Alastair Sim, head of product management for SAS Institute UK. "There is growing demand or NT-based data warehouse and data mining solutions in the UK, and this extension of the existing SAS Institute/Microsoft alliance is designed to help enterprise customers build solutions as easily as possible."   Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise version 6.5 is a robust, scaleable database designed to help Microsoft ISV partners to develop high performance, cost effective solutions. Microsoft Repository is a database that stores and shares software components along with their descriptive information. Designed as an open architecture product for use with multiple products from different vendors, the repository creates and manages the relationships between the items it contains. It delivers important capabilities to desktop and server environments in five key areas: reuse, tool interoperability, team development, data resource management and dependency tracking. The Repository consists of an Open Information Model, a set of published COM interfaces and an engine that sits on top of a relational database such as Microsoft SQL Server. SAS/Warehouse Administrator software is an integrated product for facilitating the building and managing of data warehouses. Designed to provide a single point of control for those implementing and administering data warehouses, SAS/Warehouse Administrator software provides a framework for effective warehouse management through a metadata-driven architecture. This enables users to benefit from extensive functionality, including business subject definition, consolidation of business rules, scheduling of processes for warehouse maintenance and integration with decision support tools for effective warehouse exploitation.