Technical Note
Security

Contents General Overview A Broad Choice of Analytic Facilities and Configurations Functionality and Applications: The Advantages of WebSTATISTICA Server    A software system that makes STATISTICA available "everywhere"    A powerful, enterprise-wide collaborative-intelligence system    Advantages of the distributed processing, and multi-tier Client-Server architecture    STATISTICA Client    Advantages of Multithreading technology WebSTATISTICA User Interface Compatibility with Industry Standards Architecture of the System (A Technical Note) Competitive Advantages WebSTATISTICA Knowledge Portal WebSTATISTICA Demo Movie Q & A

White Paper: WebSTATISTICA Security    (Adobe®Acrobat® Reader is available for free download on the Adobe Web site).

Overview (technical language). WebSTATISTICA Server is a highly scalable, enterprise-level, web-based data analysis and database gateway application system, built on distributed processing technology and fully supporting multi-tier Client-Server architecture configurations. WebSTATISTICA Server exposes the analytic, query, reporting, and graphics functionality of STATISTICA through easy to use, interactive, standard web interfaces. It is offered as a complete, ready to install application with an interactive, Internet browser-based ("point and click") user interface, allowing users in remote locations to interactively create data sets, run analyses, and review output. However, because of its open architecture, WebSTATISTICA Server can also be used as a development environment; it includes a comprehensive set of development kit tools (based entirely on industry standard syntax conventions such as VB Script, C++, HTML, XML), allowing IT departments to customize all main components of the system, or to expand it by building on its foundations, for example, by adding new components and/or corporation-specific analytic or database facilities. The system is compatible with all major Web server software platforms (e.g., UNIX Apache, Microsoft IIS), works in both Microsoft .net and Sun/Java environments, and does not require any changes to the existing firewall and Internet/Intranet security systems.

A Broad Choice of Analytic Facilities and Configurations

The WebSTATISTICA Server system is offered as a complete solution that includes, with few exceptions, the complete statistical functionality of the respective selected STATISTICA product or any combination of products, starting with STATISTICA Base and up to all enterprise systems: e.g., any versions of STATISTICA Enterprise or Data Miner(where browser-based tools are provided to interactively build models by dragging icons in the workspace and to deploy these models).

The minimum installation of the WebSTATISTICA Server software includes the analytic functionality of STATISTICA Base and it is bundled with a license for 5 concurrent users (minimum).

Customers can either order a specific version of WebSTATISTICA Server including the analytic functionality that they require (e.g., STATISTICA Base for 10 users), or they can add the Web Server functionality (as described in this section) to some or all of the seats of the currently licensed STATISTICA product (e.g., add the Web Server functionality to 20 out of 50 existing licenses of STATISTICA Enterprise.

Functionality and Applications:
The advantages of WebSTATISTICA Server

A software system that makes STATISTICA available "everywhere"

Perhaps the clearest advantage offered by the WebSTATISTICA Server technology is that it makes the power of any of the STATISTICA family of products conveniently available via any computer in the world as long as it is connected to the Internet. Thus, WebSTATISTICA Server applications add a new dimension and an endless array of new possibilities and applications to the entire line of STATISTICA Data Analysis, Data Mining, Quality Control/Six Sigma software.

For example, the most recent data and reports (e.g., updated via queries to the specific parts of the corporate data warehouse) - with options to interactively drill down into the results and interactively obtain additional, specific insights about the business - can now be made available to authorized employees wherever they are and regardless of the type of computers to which they have access. Wherever there is the Internet (which means virtually ...everywhere), there is now also access to the query, reporting, and analytic tools of the most comprehensive data analysis system available.

A powerful, enterprise-wide collaborative-intelligence system

Another, equally important way to take advantage of the WebSTATISTICA Server functionality is to use it as the core and natural extension of any of the STATISTICA enterprise systems (SEWSS, SEDAS, or the Data Miner).

Specifically, WebSTATISTICA Server can act as a core of an enterprise-wide network system allowing the participants to work collaboratively, quickly share results (reports), as well as scripts of analyses or queries. User or group permissions (see the Technical Note below) can be used by the administrators to manage access of specific groups of users to specific data or reports. The accessibility of its tools via the Internet makes WebSTATISTICA Server a perfect system to facilitate collaborative projects of employees working at different locations or branches of a corporation (even on different continents), or employees who are telecommuting or traveling.

Advantages of distributed processing, and multi-tier Client-Server architecture

Moreover, regardless of whether users reside physically close to the location of the WebSTATISTICA Server (e.g., in the same building) or far away (e.g., on a different continent), they will benefit not only from the collaborative work tools but also the options to offload the computationally-intensive or time consuming tasks to the server computers. Specifically, because usually the most powerful, multiprocessor CPU's (and/or multiple computers) are used as servers, the users may offload computationally intensive tasks, and, for example, run "in the background" queries that will scan terabytes of data on remote servers and perform time consuming long sequences of analyses or reports, while keeping computers of the end-users completely free to do other tasks. Because of its distributed processing architecture, WebSTATISTICA Server scales in a highly efficient manner to take advantage of multi-processor CPU's and/or multiple computers, and therefore users can take full advantage of multi-tier Client-Server architecture, where:

• Tier 1 - is the UI on the client computer (a plain browser or STATISTICA client, see STATISTICA Client, below),
• Tier 2 - is the WebSTATISTICA Server software and the implementation of the "business intelligence" that it may contain (specific queries, scripts of custom/proprietary analyses, etc.), and
• Tier 3 - are STATISTICA data bases (e.g., SEWSS) or other corporate repositories of data.

In the desktop version of STATISTICA , all computations are performed on the local computer, and resources of other computers are used only in the case when the In-Place Database Processing (IDP) interface to external databases is established. IDP is a technology that reads data asynchronously directly from remote database servers (using distributed processing if supported by the server), and bypassing the need to "import" data and create a local copy of the data set. Records of data are retrieved and sent to the STATISTICA computer asynchronously by the CPU of the database server, while STATISTICA simultaneously processes them using the CPU of the local computer.

When a Client-Server version of STATISTICA is used, the local computer drives only the user interface of STATISTICA, and all calculations are performed on the server. The Client-Server architecture offers obvious advantages when your projects are large (e.g., computationally intensive or involving processing of extremely large data sets), and thus when they can be offloaded to the servers, freeing your local computer to perform other jobs.

Advantages of Multithreading Technology

The WebSTATISTICA platform is built on advanced distributed processing and multithreading technology to support optimal management of large computational loads. This technology enables rapid processing of even very large and computationally intensive projects, taking full advantage of the multiple CPUs on the server, or even multiple servers working in parallel. The illustration below shows a project running on a quad processor server, along with the server performance monitor demonstrating the full utilization of the resources of all four CPUs executing in the multithreading mode a single, computationally intensive STATISTICA Data Miner project.

In addition, the WebSTATISTICA architecture delivers a platform-independent, Web browser-based user interface, and provides an ultimate, large enterprise-level ability to manage projects or groups of users "across the hall or across continents".

Ultimate scalability (parallel processing technology). One of the unique features of the STATISTICA distributed processing technology is that it flexibly scales not only to take advantage of all CPUs on the current server computer (to support both multiple jobs/users and also individual, computationally intensive projects), but it also scales to multiple server computers. That unique feature is important, since it delivers significant performance gains. STATISTICA uses the parallel processing technology across separate hardware units (like some supercomputers do), and therefore, if you have - for example - three servers with 4 processors each, STATISTICA can run even an individual project on all 12 processors (if only the scale of that project warrants that mode of processing).

The WebSTATISTICA implementation of STATISTICA allows users to interactively run the program from the client machine in a Web browser interface that is essentially identical to that available for the desktop installation. Therefore, the client side of the application (the "front end") can be run on any computer (even a laptop) as long as it is connected to the Internet. However, the actual computations and other operations performed on the data will remain on the (remote) server with its usually more powerful processors and storage resources (and they will be managed using the optimized, multithreading and distributed processing architecture of the system for maximum performance).

In essence, the user interface aspects of STATISTICA can be run by one or multiple users from any computer in the world (as long as they are connected to the Internet, even by a slow connection), while the server performs all computations and data operations, enforcing the proper security and access privileges applicable to the respective projects and classes of users, as designed by the network administrator.

WebSTATISTICA offers a straightforward user-interface supporting the complete selection of interactive data analysis, data mining, quality control, database management, database query, and graph customization operations.

and interactively review the output.

However, in addition to these built-in, straightforward user interface facilities, WebSTATISTICA includes also a toolkit allowing the users to customize the user interface and develop custom applications with specifically predefined functionality, and packaged in a way that matches the requirements of their specific applications.

Compatibility with Industry Standards

The unsurpassed compatibility with industry standards is another in the long list of unique advantages of the WebSTATISTICA Server.

WebSTATISTICA Server can be deployed on any of the popular Web server platforms (e.g., a UNIX-based Apache or IIS), therefore, it will conform to the existing, local security protocols (fire walls) as required by the corporate client. However, if desired, the Web server system software can be installed as part of the deployment of WebSTATISTICA Server (in that case an IIS system is usually recommended).

WebSTATISTICA Server uses advanced proprietary technology developed at StatSoft to ensure its high performance and scalability (e.g., up to multiple, multiprocessor STATISTICA Server computers working in a distributed processing environment). This technology is built on StatSoft's years of experience providing high performance, scalable enterprise systems to major corporations in the US and around the world. However, WebSTATISTICA Server is still based on the industry standard communication protocols (e.g., XML) to ensure (a) its platform independence, (b) smooth transition to future technologies, and (c) to guarantee ease of customization by the client. Note that the ease of customization is additionally boosted by the fact that only the industry standard syntax conventions (such as VB script, C++, HTML, XML) are used to customize, configure, and define all the specific analytic operations and all output in WebSTATISTICA.

Architecture of the System (A Technical Note)

Although the general design uses - in a typical configuration - two "machines," the Web Server (e.g., a UNIX-based Apache system) and at least one STATISTICA Server (optionally scalable to multiple STATISTICA Servers):

In many cases, the STATISTICA Server could be installed on the same machine if desired (when IIS is used as the Web host):

The design allows for a flexible, generic Web Server implementation by using a standard scripting language on the Web Server. The purpose of the Web Server is to package requests from the user (received from a browser), send these to the STATISTICA Server, and then process responses from the STATISTICA Server for display to the user (on his/her browser).

Communication between the Web Server and the STATISTICA Server is accomplished through technology based on the industry standard XML conventions. The system is fully customizable and for customers who wish to develop their own modifications or extensions of this (ready to deploy) system, it provides development tool kit facilities allowing to modify all aspects of both the scripts that are being executed by STATISTICA (on the STATISTICA Server side) and the appearance of the user interface exposed to the end-users on the (browser based) thin client side. Only the most standard, commonly known tools (such as VB or XML/HTML) are used to customize or expand the system.

The actual Web page definitions and STATISTICA scripts to be executed are stored in a designated Repository Facility on the STATISTICA Server and they are managed in a queue-like fashion. The system includes also a highly optimized Distributed Processing Manager that handles the incoming processing load and distributes it optimally over multiple threads of STATISTICA and multiple STATISTICA Server computers.

The WebSTATISTICA Server software system includes also the STATISTICA Visual Basic Web Extensions. These extensions to the SVB language allow the script writer to either let the system take care of displaying the resulting graphs and spreadsheets on the automatically generated (output) Web pages, or to customize the appearance of the generated output pages by adding in HTML directives as appropriate.

Security and authentication is a key design feature in the WebSTATISTICA Server application system. At the beginning of the session, users "sign on" to the system with their user name and password. System administrators are able to control access to data sources and scripts based either on user or group permissions. The highest level of the access privilege allows advanced users (or administrators) to execute virtually arbitrary scripts (e.g., in order to perform system administration or maintenance operations). That level require a designated (highest) access privilege, because - due to the general nature and power of the STATISTICA Visual Basic language, it gives access (to the authorized users) to all resources on the network.

Note that this system can be integrated with the "traditional" (i.e., non-Web-based) STATISTICA concurrent network or a STATISTICA enterprise system authentication scheme, so that a corporate customer can install, for example, a 50-user (total) STATISTICA enterprise system or a concurrent network with 20 of them accessible via the WebSTATISTICA Server.

Competitive Advantages

The competitive advantages of the WebSTATISTICA Server applications start obviously with the complete list of unique features of STATISTICA itself. Further, unlike the competing products, we offer a complete application (a "solution") with a Web-based user-interface and not merely a "development kit" (although the development kit facilities are also available to extend or customize the system, see above). Also, we do not require that a specific Web server software be first installed (which may or may not comply with the client's security standards and other policies). Finally, our system is controlled by industry standard VB scripts, C++, HTML, and XML that can be easily modified by users or system administrators. Also, our distributed processing and multithreading technology delivers performance and system responsiveness that is not matched by any competing products.

WebSTATISTICA Knowledge Portal

A designated WebSTATISTICA Knowledge Portal application is optionally available that enables users to effectively and securely distribute organized sets of output documents over the Web. It offers support for workgroups of users (each with different access privileges, and thus access to different parts of the database of output documents), intuitive tree-view organization of available materials, and options to broadcast documents updated on the Web server in real time.

WebSTATISTICA Demo Movie

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