I have been doing some analysis using MS Excel's Pivot Table tool. For what
I am doing right now, it works fine. But I am working with only 20,000
records and would like to work with much larger data sets. Pivot Tables
have a limit of 32k records (IIRC) and several posters at Excel newsgroups
have complained about the real limit being as low as 27,000 records (they
get an error msg about limits being exceeded).

Is there something similar to Excel's Pivot Tables but with much greater
capacity/flexibility? It could be a stand-alone or client/server or
whatever, I just need something that is not terribly expensive and do not
need a full-blown OLAP system (at least not at this point in time).

Thanks for any info.

Jim wrote:

maybe have a look at alea from mis (www.misag.com)? You can start
standalone/single user and grow from there. very nice excel-integration
(allows complete "administration", modelling and data loading from within
excel). We tried it years ago on a prototype and stayed with it. Currently
though, i'm afraid, we have what you would call a 'full-blown olap system'
:-)

cheers
Heimo

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"Heimo Hetl" <trashcan (AT) hetl (DOT) net> wrote

Their website, IMHO, is not very well designed and I could not find out much
about Alea (requirements, pricing, etc). Currently, I have some info in MS
Access that I hope will be moved to a mainframe app. I do not know which
DBMS it would go on, I do know that at least one part of my company uses
Oracle, but I do not know if that is a corporate standard of if other areas
are using SQL Server, Sybase, whatever.

In any event, I wanted something that could work with MS Access but still
have more power than Pivot Tbls alone. If I can demonstrate to mgmt the
usefulness of a tool that easily gets them info not previously available, I
will have an easier time getting them to convert this Access app to a
mainframe app.

I believe that many Excel add-ins require MS Analysis Services, but perhaps
some could work with Access if they only need ODBC? Do you have any more
info about Alea? Sorry for the ignorant questions, but from what research I
have done, I know only the main players and how they would work with MS
Analysis Services or other major vendors and have not seen anything about
"micro" applications.

Thanks

"Jim" <nospam (AT) nospam (DOT) com> wrote

I think based on what u said in your email. U can try
Microsoft analysis services 2000. U can get a demo for free for 120
days. It is pretty easy to use. and since you are familiar with Excel
pivot tables services. It would be so walk in the park for you.

Regards
Harsha mogatala

"Harsha" <harsha (AT) rmatech (DOT) ca> wrote

snip
My understanding is that the MS Analysis Services comes without additional
charge to purchasers of SQL Server. Is it available as a stand-alone? I
looked on the MS website and saw no indication of that.

It may be that if I end up moving this off the desktop, I will be able to
use SQL Server or Oracle or something else (I do not know what we have at
this point). I also recall that Analysis Services can be used with non-MS
databases (am I correct?). Even if this is true, do they sell it
separately? I did not think they did. I may have missed something at the
MS website, but I did quite a bit of looking around. Then again, the MS
website is like Alaska - a very large place where it is easy to get lost.

"Jim" <nospam (AT) nospam (DOT) com> wrote

Yes, Analysis Services is only sold bundled with SQL Server -- but the
complete Standard Edition of SQL Server, including the RDBMS, DTS ETL
tool and Analysis Services is significantly cheaper than any stand-alone
OLAP server. I think the entry level five-user price for SQL Server 2000
is $1,489. Although you lose a few advanced features in this edition
compared to the Enterprise Edition, you'll probably find that it does
much more than you need, and is very scalable.

Analysis Services does work with any RDBMS. Indeed, it's possible to
install Analysis Services without installing SQL Server -- they may be
bundled together but they don't depend on each other technically (at
least in the current release). In fact, lots of Oracle and DB2 sites use
Analysis Services as they prefer it to the OLAP servers supplied by
those database vendors.

Jim wrote:

I should have looked there myself before giving out suggestions. It seems
tey're calling their product "MIS application server" now... There used to
be a full featured, time limited demo available for download, but that
apparently isn't the case anymore.

Just for fun I asked the sales guy in charge of our account about this, and
basically he agreed that the website is not, well, entirely helpful. A demo
CD is, however, available on request. It used to be easier to buy their
stuff...

We started with some text files we had extracted manually from SAP, later we
pulled some data out of Access via ODBC. This was the stage when we got
management approval.

Today, we have kind of a department data mart in Oracle which we query via
ODBC to load the information into Alea hypercubes. There are a number of
other options, but we don't have any further needs in the moment.

Alea is an olap db engine by itself, so its excel frontend doesn't require
any additional olap database. It can mingle with MS AS however, as well as
SAP BW (if you so desire) and some others.

Sure. I work with it every day. I am just not too well equipped with
marketing material. I usually toss this kind of stuff immediately after
opening :-) Maybe you ask mis for a more professional sales pitch?

nah!

I'm off for a 4 weeks vacation tomorrow, but I'll check back with this
thread when I return. But I see Nigel Pendse dropped in, he sure can tell
you more than I can.

cheers
Heimo

btw: my reply-to address is valid, however, my spam filter is quite
aggressive.


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l'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.