My company currently generates a large number of reports in Excel that are
basically produced by VBA macros querying a relational database and
formatting the results. Since this is somewhat tedious and the developers
here have limited SQL skills, I've been looking at using some sort of OLAP
tool to simplify the process.

The report formats tend to be fairly complicated and I've found that
using and kind of point-and-click pivot table-like front end isn't
flexible enough. I'm looking for what I've seen called 'disjoint'
reporting.

Using straight MDX is out, since, as I mentioned, the developers here
already have trouble with normal SQL. I've been looking at various
ActiveX products, but their object models seemed only capable of
automating the creation of pivot tables or whatever their built-in user
interface is. I've also looked at XLcubed, which supports disjoint
reporting, but it doesn't seem to have an ActiveX interface.

What I think I need is an ActiveX version of something like XLcubed.

Any suggestions?

"Glen K" <blah (AT) blah (DOT) com> wrote

There are a number of other Excel add-ins that work with Analysis Services.
Apart from XLCubed, IntelligentApps and MIS Plain are among the better ones,
but you might also consider Visual OLAP and BIXL. Disjoint report is
possible with any of those.

Nigel Pendse
OLAP Solutions
http://www.olapreport.com

Glen,

Why do you need "an ActiveX version of something like XLcubed."?

Are you making use of Analysis Services Cubes?

XLCubed & MIS Plain (I work for MIS) are very capable of producing
disjoint reports in Excel with data from AS cubes.

Regards,

John

P.S. Have a look at my website www.johnkeeley.com




"Nigel Pendse" <nigelp.nospam (AT) compuserve (DOT) com> wrote

On Thu, 20 Nov 2003 10:30:30 -0800, JK wrote:

something that had an object oriented interface. We've created reports in
the past that made use of Excel links and formulas, but for large reports
making changes became cumbersome, so we've pretty much abandoned this
approach.

I downloaded the XLCubed demo but I had problems getting it to work on the
test machine. I decided not to pursue it since it didn't have an
object-oriented interface, but maybe I'll give it another try.

BIXL seems like it might be what I'm lookink for, but their website has
nothing but marketing fluff and no comcrete details or downloadable demo,
and I really don't want to give them my phoen number just to get a trial
copy.

Glen,
Drop me an email with what you are looking for in XLCubed and we can
discuss.

The whole idea behind XLCubed is to be able to produce highly
customised reports easily without having to resort to code, (not to
say that you can't if you really want to).

We have a new version which is about to go to public beta which adds
some additional capability which may also interest you.

I promise not to bug you forever and a day if you contact me !! My
background is as a developer and not a salesman and I understand your
reluctance to give phone numbers.

Thanks

Mark Scanlon
XLCubed


Glen K <blah (AT) blah (DOT) com> wrote

Glen,

Try ContourCube ActiveX. You can download it here: www.ContourComponents.com

Vladimir