December 9, 2008 at 11:30 am
What are some reporting tools or products that can be used to report on a SSAS cube for the end-user?
Thanks.
December 9, 2008 at 12:44 pm
The Microsoft offerings are ProClarity, PerformancePoint Server, and Excel 2007. ProClarity and PerformancePoint server are very powerful reporting tools. There are many OLAP cube viewers out there but you need to clearly define your current BI needs as well as your anticipated future needs before choosing a package.
If you only need to browse the cube you can also use Visual Studio BIDS if you designed the cube within VS.
December 9, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Most of our users are still on Excel 2000. I noticed in the Data menu of Excel 2000 that there are 'Get External Data' and 'Pivot Table and Pivot Chart' sub menus with an 'OLAP Cubes' option. Will Excel 2000 work with a SSAS 2005 cube?
Thanks.
December 9, 2008 at 1:43 pm
You should be able to according to Microsoft. This link has a microsoft article outlining how to connect to a SSAS 2005 OLAP Cube.
December 10, 2008 at 3:08 am
SQL Server Reporting Services and Sharepoint Excel services are pretty good ways of delivering information to users.
December 10, 2008 at 4:19 am
For a great list of client tools that can be used against SQL Server Analysis Services refer to this link:
http://www.ssas-info.com/analysis-services-client-tools-frontend
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Dan English - http://denglishbi.wordpress.com
December 11, 2008 at 6:54 am
Great list Dan!
I also agree with the earlier post urging you to think longer term.
Distributing client side tools - is this easily done in your situation?
Do you want users to 'build their own views', or is it better for everyone to use a more standard shared set of views?
Be aware that depending on the tool, what can be sent down to the client can be a large set of data, with calculations happening on the client.
A large, well dimensioned cube, can be pretty daunting to most users if they are allowed to see it all. And depending on the tool being used, they may have to learn MDX and the cube structure to build the queries they want.
Probably the quickest and best route is to explore reporting services. Exposing through a WSS / Sharepoint site would allow mixed content, which can be a plus.
Excel 2000 - the newer versions are much more compatible.
And be aware that if your users are not pivot table smart, there will be training needed. It was a new concept to most users, and we've had that most success with standard sets of views, and tools where they can right click and drill down (or cross drill).
Greg E
December 11, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Thank you all for your responses.
Greg, can you point me to reference material for exposing Reporting Services to WSS?
Thanks.
December 11, 2008 at 3:11 pm
We use PerformancePoint to expose ours. It has it's own Report Designer to tie thing together.
But at the end of the day, each report has a url to get to it. Here's a sample of 1 of ours.
http://RSServer/Reports/Pages/Report.aspx?ItemPath=%2fReports%2fDRA+Exceptions
So add a page viewer web part and give it a try.
Maybe someone has something else to add.
Greg E
December 12, 2008 at 4:49 am
Good responses so far. I have used a range of the tools on the list, and would agree that a vision needs to be defined which addresses the needs of the users.
A low total cost of ownership is usually important
Given you have MSAS cubes deployed already, a tool that exposes these in user friendly formats is essential - Excel / Web
Drag and drop functionality allows users to quickly and cheaply generate their own reports, especially if they can 'slice' into a tool like Excel - reduces IT/external support overhead
Some tools do not maintain live links back to the cubes, they simply drop the values in the report, meaning (from a user perspective) the report has to be re-run every month
In Excel 2007, there is some good pivot table functionality, however it can be restrictive if you want to combine sources from multiple cubes - Microsoft will be addressing this in 2010 (Gemini)
In my experience any BI tool chosen to expose MSAS cubes should consider not one-way traffic, but also the possibility of writing back to those cubes (planning, budgeting etc)
PerformancePoint allows users to contribute data back to the cubes, and the CALUMO product allows writeback through Excel 2003 onwards, and web.
As with any requirement -
understand your data
engage and empower your users
simplicity and strong core features are essentials for your software choice
Good luck!
December 15, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Supposedly you can use Crystal Reports to report on a cube, but I have yet to be able to get Crystal Reports to connect to my SQL Server 2005 DB.
December 16, 2008 at 2:47 am
Crystal reports XI will work with sql 2005 databases and analysis services cubes, you might need to make sure you have all the relavent sql drivers on the pc running the crystal designer, for the cubes you will probably need to download and run SQLServer2005_ASOLEDB9.msi
May 6, 2011 at 1:45 am
Check out Pyramid Analytics. The latest and greatest!
November 23, 2012 at 4:52 am
Please consider also CXO-Cockpit.
CXO-Cockpit is an easy to use intuitive reporting and dashboard tool for SQL Server Analysis Services. CXO-Cockpit is web based and compatible with all market standard browsers. CXO-Cockpit also has also mobile apps for iPad, iPhone, Android and soon Windows 8.
Checkout our website here: http://ssas.cxo-cockpit.com
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