The challenge is to continually refresh this data and to make it accessible to heads of state, finance ministers, chief economists, educators or anyone involved in helping developing countries onto a path of stable, sustainable, and equitable growth. Solutions Results A group of World Bank staff from the Data and Tools for Economic Analysis thematic group got together and agreed on a list of new features and capabilities to address these evolving needs. After shopping around for six months for the right mix of technology, tools and service providers, the team selected Microsoft SQL Server 200 with OLAP Services and ProClarity - a ready made solution that provided users additional functionality that previously required high priced programmers. In addition, ProClarity provided the ability to disseminate this information over the Internet. The result is that users are now able to perform complex calculations in seconds when not previously possible.
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Online metadata gives users insights into the meanings of the many indicators. Finally the open architecture allowed for building very advanced functionality. SQL Server 2000 and OLAP technology gives us the ability to browse all this data in an extremely flexible way. It s a very powerful tool in order to get to the kind of data you need right now, explained Christian Petersen, Lead Economist, World Bank. All rights reserved.