The approach gives Teradata users a quick and relatively inexpensive way to set up small departmental warehouses without an additional investment in hardware and software needed for a physical data mart. Prices for NCR's logical data marts range from $37,000 to $82,000. NCR's physical data marts start at $250,000.

"If we could logically partition a base warehouse into specific data marts, then yippee!" said Tim Vokes, a senior database administrator at Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield, a Tera~data user in Cincinnati.

"Departments could focus their data needs into these logical marts and not have to wade through the entire database looking for what they need. It makes things a lot faster," said Mark Frazier, staff manager of finance systems at Lucent Technologies, Inc.'s communications equipment unit in Basking Ridge, N.J.

The announcement is the latest in NCR's continuing bid to keep data mart vendors from poaching its Teradata users. The Dayton, Ohio, company recently rolled back entry-level prices of its Teradata relational database management software by more than 33% -- its second major pricing action this year [CW, June 30]. And NCR is working with Microsoft Corp. to port Teradata to the Windows NT operating system. The NT version is scheduled for delivery early next year.

NCR tried twice previously to get its data mart act together -- without much success, said Wayne Eckerson, an analyst at Patricia Seybold Group in Boston. "But I think this time it's going to be serious, because they're starting to get some incursions at the low end in [Teradata] accounts," Eckerson said. "The whole strategy here is to nip that in the bud."

Indeed, the data mart offering is aimed more at protecting the Teradata installed base than at attracting new users, said Robert Craig, an analyst at Hurwitz Group, Inc. in Newton, Mass. "NCR is just covering their flanks."

Teradata's orientation toward big, centralized data warehouses is opening the door to Oracle Corp. and other vendors that can provide the smaller and more focused data marts that have become fashionable, Craig said.

Data marts often are sold to individual departments or business units, "and that's something NCR typically hasn't done very well," Craig added.