Drill Down on the World Series: BI Evaluates the MVPsDrill Down on the World Series: BI Evaluates the MVPs

Albert Pujols accounts for nearly a quarter of the St. Louis Cardinals' payroll (excluding pitchers), yet Yadier Molina, who draws less than one percent of the Cards' payroll, was the surprise star who batted in nearly a quarter of the team's runs during the Division and League Championship series. In contrast, Magglio Ordonez earns nearly a third of the Detroit Tiger's Team salary, but he also drove in about a third of the team's runs in the playoffs.

How are the number's stacking up through the first two games of the World Series? Information Builders Inc. (IBI) is using its business intelligence (BI) software to deliver the kinds of analyses team owners demand from their BI gurus, yet any armchair jock can drill down on the numbers at the company's Web site. You can sort, filter, chart, visualize, calculate and roll up team and player stats for the Tigers and Cards as well as the New York Mets and Oakland Athletics.

IBI began publishing reports on Baseball's post season on Monday using WebFOCUS Active Reports. The technology combines data and analytic capabilities in a single, Java-script-powered document, so you don't need licensed BI software, Microsoft Excel or even an Internet connection to perform analyses within a browser.

"This is a packaged BI application in a single file," says Richard Sitt, technical director for IBI's Web FOCUS product family. "For many other Web-based BI reporting tools, you need a license for the BI software and a connection to the Internet."

IBI customers including Air Canada and Pfizer are using Active Reports to deliver data and analysis capabilities to field service and sales professionals. Given the license-free approach, you could also deliver self-service analysis capabilities to millions via e-mail or the Web, enabling customers to drill down on phone or credit card records, for example. Active Reports is an optional add-on to IBI's WebFOCUS Reporting Server and is priced per-server starting at $7,000 for a single-CPU Windows server to $50,000 for a mainframe deployment. The Reporting Server itself is the cornerstone of IBI's WebFOCUS BI suite, and it ranges from $30,000 to $130,000 depending on the scale of the deployment.

IBI plans to update its reports on Baseball through the end of the World Series