Hi Everyone,

I am looking for a commercial tool to consume XML/A OLAP data sources.
This tool needs to be a proper work tool for analytical data play and
reporting. Web based tools are no good to me at this time due to the
nature of the network environment. If anyone knows of a tool,
something similar perhaps to Proclarity perhaps, that can use an XMLA
source as its data provider I would love to know about it.

Thanks in advance

The Frog

<Mr.Frog.to.you (AT) googlemail (DOT) com> wrote

Can't most client tools for Analysis Services meet this requirement?
Most have a client/server version.

Hi Nigel,

I am not sure if they can or cannot. Most of the ones that I have seen
want to connect to Analysis Services on SQL Server (directly). I need
to avoid this and effectively make the tool independant of the source.

Where I work we have a number of different OLAP sources, all needing
specialised tools to work with them. They can output XML/A and so I
was hoping to be able to simply the user environment by using just one
tool for all the different sources of data.

I am not sure if this can be achieved, but it would be a real boon for
us if it could.

Do you know of any tools that might meet this requirement. I have seen
some web based ones, but we really would prefer a client rather than a
web client.

Cheers and thanks

The Frog

<Mr.Frog.to.you (AT) googlemail (DOT) com> wrote

OK, I see what you mean. I think the issue is that different OLAP
servers all have subtly different interpretations of MDX, so client tool
makers try and customise the queries they generate or want to know how
to interpret the results. That's why they want to connect to named XML/A
providers, so they 'know' how to behave, rather than just generically.
This blog from Panorama illustrates the problem:
www.panorama.com/blog/?p=44

In article <ULudnZPesdRE3_TbnZ2dnUVZ8vqdnZ2d (AT) bt (DOT) com>,
"Nigel Pendse" <nigelp (AT) compuserve (DOT) com> wrote:

Have you looked at Rubik? It's an open source project (not commercial),
but it might meet your needs. From the description:

Tools for navigating and reporting over OLAP Datasources, mainly
Mondrian and XMLA servers. This project is based on the components
developed by the JPivot project.

You can download it and try it from http://sourceforge.net/projects/rubik

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Gentleman,

Thankyou both for your invaluable input into this topic. I am amazed
at the sheer variation in the implementation of "standard" MDX. It
really does make this a messy area to work with. The blog was a very
accurate account of things (unfortunately).

I am going to have a crack at using the Rubik application. I was
considering working with the Mondrian OLAP server for field staff
because I can send the updates to them relatively easily for the data.
Rubik looks like a nice implementation of the idea I was having,
although at the time of writing it doesnt appear to be a fully
developed release just yet. It should be more than sufficient for
testing purposes I think though.

Thankyou both for your input, you have given me what I need to get my
job done. I really appreciate it. Thankyou once again.

Cheers

The Frog