Hi there,

I am looking to identify and evaluate some cost-effective OLAP
solutions.

I am looking for solutions that could be reasonably acquired by
smaller organisations (who are looking to spend £15k rather than
£150K).

If anyone can recommend a solution or has experience with a cheaper
solution (okay Ive started calling a spade, "a spade" now!) that they
can share, I would be very interested to hear from them.

We generally work with SQl Server and Oracle database platforms, are
looking to deliver information via star schemas and cubes, and would
be looking to offer slice and dice and drilling functionality over a
web-based front end.

Many thanks.

Well, I'm not sure of the best cheap solution for you on the web-based
front-end, but as far as your RDBMS & multi-dimensional data storage,
you've already got the pieces that you need. SQL Server comes with
Analysis Services, which gives you the ability to design, build and
store your cubes. From there, you've got the option of deploying the
cubes via a number of different front-ends. Analysis Services will
likely be able to handle the information needs of your organization, but
I say that without knowing the specifics.

As far as the front-end situation goes, you'll have to evaluate tools
against your specific situations. There are a wide number of options,
many of which do not have to expensive, even for the top-of-the-line
tools (again, depending on your situation). Do a full evaluation, look
at the capabilities of the wider range of tools against your
requirements, then decide based on what you think you can give up in
return for saving a few bucks. That's just my opinion.

Hope this helps.


E

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