ER/Studio 6.5 readied Embarcadero Technologies on Monday is announcing a June ship date for its ER/Studio 6.5 and ER/Studio Repository 3.0 data life cycle management tools, which are focused on enterprise metadata and dimensional modeling analysis.The company with the tools is citing benefits of optimizing IT investments, improving staff productivity, and boosting data integration, business intelligence, and reporting.The Studio product is a model-driven application for designing and maintaining database applications. ER/Studio Repository 3.0 serves as a collaborative server for Studio. ER/Studio 6.5 helps users simplify documentation and communication of the baseline state of their data to leverage it for application development and reporting, according to Embarcadero. The product also helps users anticipate what the state of their data should be across the data life cycle. New features in the products include business intelligence and dimensional modeling, simplified enterprise metadata analysis and management, and model-driven database performance-tuning assistance. A MetaWizard function simplifies metadata importation, visualization, and exportation. “The MetaWizard in ER/Studio now enables our customers to interconnect and pull in metadata from myriad environments and export to myriad environments,” said Greg Keller, director of enterprise modeling solutions at Embarcadero.A Where Used implementation feature provides for identification and tracing of data across disparate systems. The Dimensional Modeling component in Studio simplifies building of data warehouses and data marts. “Dimensional modeling allows the end user of ER/Studio to visualize a data warehouse or a data mart. It then allows you to generate the code to build that data warehouse or data mart,” Keller said.Additionaly, “denormalization assistance” wizards simplify database design while ensuring changes do not lose ties to business data entities. “[Denormalization assistance wizards] assist the database designer in making better decisions on how to tune the database,” said Keller.New project management and collaboration tools simplify creation of Repository diagrams and team-based collaboration to ensure all use the same set of components, according to Embarcadero. The repository enables a user to trace specific data elements to determine how they have been used. ER/Studio 6.5 costs $2,995 per seat while the Repository starts in price at $10,000. Software DevelopmentBusiness IntelligenceTechnology IndustryDatabasesData WarehousingSmall and Medium Business