As with many of our fellow exhibitors there, we had a big bowl of candy at the front of the booth.  The idea was to draw people in for the candy, and then catch their eye with the video or with a brochure.

But sometimes it worked too well- I'm sure that I saw some attendees come back 3-4 times for another handful. 

Shows like this are a great chance to talk to end users, and we got a chance to talk to people about what they were using for their source systems, and what kind of reporting or data analysis they had.  Excel was the almost universal constant, and as expected the Excel export functionality in Datamartist almost always received a warm welcome.   There were a lot of self-employed accountants in attendance, and the possibility of a solution that didn't require any servers, and didn't need any SQL programming skills seemed to go over pretty well with people on a tight budget.  It was clear that the economic environment was on everyone's mind.

Some of the people most excited about what datamartist could do were those who confessed they'd dabbled in some database programming to try to get a handle on their data when they'd exhausted what Excel could do.  They immediately understood how powerful the reference set functionality was, having seen themselves what was needed in a database environment to build dimensions.  Our comparison of spreadsheets, Datamartist and databases made this clear, and you could see the light go on as users realised where Datamartist fit.

One of things that many of the attendees expressed an interest in was to have pre-defined import blocks that took data directly from a specific application, and did pre-defined transformations to kick off their analysis- we're definitely putting that one on our list- we're certain our beta testers will have suggestions as to which application might be a good candidate for our first application import block.

Now that the show is over, and the signs and candies are stored away, its back to the Beta, and I'm charged up after having a chance to talk to users with clear problems Datamartist can solve.  I want to thank the whole trade show team for a great job- and a very successful show.

]]> http://www.datamartist.com/datamartist-beta-presented-in-toronto/feed 0 http://www.datamartist.com/datamartist-at-the-financial-technology-show-in-toronto http://www.datamartist.com/datamartist-at-the-financial-technology-show-in-toronto#comments Sat, 15 Nov 2008 03:33:36 +0000 James Standen http://www.datamartist.com/?p=365 As we get closer and closer to the Beta, a major milestone is coming up fast.  nModal Solutions will be proudly presenting the pre-Beta at the Financial Technology Show on Nov. 25

As anyone who has exhibited at a trade show can tell you there is a fair amount of work to be done to make it all happen. I'm very pleased with how its all coming together.  If you are in Toronto on Nov. 25, drop by booth #104 and take Datamartist for a spin.

We're looking forward to unveiling the next wave in memory based data transformation in person at the trade show.   But most of the action is online (of course)- and the next phase of Datamartist's development is one of the most exciting.  Our beta testers, although of course helping us squish the bugs that got through Alpha, are also going to give us all sorts of juicy functionality to really flesh out the application.

Datamartist is based on a block and canvas approach, that lets users break down complex data transformations into a series of steps, each one represented by a "Block" on the data canvas.  Because the user can see the data set at every step of the process, it turns complex transformations into a series of simple ones.  I particularly like this approach because I'm a visual thinker-I like drawings and diagrams.  (It's my engineering soul coming to the fore.)

But unlike the extremely expensive and technically focused solutions currently available, Datamartist does not require complex programming skills, and maintains a much more flexible outlook on data typing and table structure-  it's closer to a spreadsheet than a database in some ways.

Because of its ease of use, you don't need to hire expensive IT resources to build what you want.  The whole premise of Datamartist is bringing new capability to the end users.

Rather than literally pages of impossible to read Structured Query Language (SQL), the canvas is an easy to navigate map, with each block along the way understandable, configurable, and clear.

On the other hand, unlike a spreadsheet, Datamartist maintains formal data models and rules, as well as the underlying Meta Data needed to design dimensional hierarchies, and create conformed dimensions within multiple data marts. 
Sign up for the Beta. Take control of your data.