The enhancements also include Compustat data Analysts' Notes, which give financial professionals an unprecedented view into Compustat's underlying data components and proprietary data classification methodologies. The combined capabilities help financial professionals perform more granular and accurate quantitative modeling, back-testing, stock screening and analysis.

RI 8.0 includes industry-specific data sets covering North American companies in the Compustat database for five industry sectors: Homebuilding, Retail, Oil and Gas, Airlines and Healthcare Facilities. These data sets include unique information that drives each industry, such as Fuel Consumption for Airlines and Reserve Replacement Ratio for Oil and Gas. RI 8.0 also features new Compustat data Analysts' Notes, which can be viewed in Microsoft Excel and provide detailed research and calculation notes, including adjustments to income statements or corrections to company reporting, from Standard & Poor's Compustat data analysts. Over the next two months, additional data will be added to RI 8.0. For example, historical coverage of daily pricing data for North American companies will double from five to 10 years.

"Institutional investors have a growing need for technology-enabled analytic tools that can support increasingly sophisticated trading and investment strategies, including sector-based methodologies," says Doug Dashiell, product manager for Standard & Poor's. "RI's new sector data sets and extended historical coverage provide financial professionals with additional quantitative research and decision support capabilities."

Also included in RI 8.0 is the new Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS) Aggregate, which aggregates Compustat company fundamentals and market data to form comprehensive industry-level financial data based on the historical GICS structure. Covering some 99 percent of U.S. companies based on market capitalization, the GICS Aggregate provides quarterly snapshots of financial conditions of the U.S. equity markets at all levels of GICS. This data allows RI users to perform valuation, ratio and other quantitative analyses on desired industry levels from the broadest GICS sectors to the most granular sub-industries.

With the platform upgrade, fundamental coverage on global companies has been increased to include 20 years of historical data. Global interim historical coverage has also been enhanced to include semi-annual data items, such as income statement balance sheet and cash flow.