Birst figures it's scored an industry first by making its cloud-based Mobile Business Intelligence (BI) SDK available for the Apple iPad.

The new iOS SDK lets developers embed highly interactive and visual Birst-powered business analytics in their native iPad apps. Taking advantage of the iPad's gesture-based interface, they can build mobile applications that filter information of interest and drill into details on both charts and report tables.

The widgetry saves developers from having to concentrate on the plumbing, such as the data warehouse, data integration, data quality and core BI engine, and lets them focus on building business intelligence into their applications. By writing to Birst's Mobile APIs, the company says they can bypass the complicated data integration, quality and consolidation issues that underpin BI implementations.

Users are supposed to be able to take advantage of the iPad's touch-screen interface and swipe to scroll through report tables to move from one report to the next or tap on a chart for more detail.

Birst integrates data from a variety of on-premise and cloud-based sources into a single "version of truth." Its cloud-based architecture provides the mobile access control and data security. Birst automatically compiles a logical business model into a fully optimized star schema data warehouse, making it possible to deploy a solution in short order with a fraction of the resources required using other business intelligence products.

Birst's got sample code to explore its capabilities.

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