To all OLAP gurus:

My organization is considering an OLAP solution for business
intelligence/reporting. I think this is great but I have serious
misgivings about the proposed design and I was wondering if the
professionals on this board could set me straight as I am not an OLAP
expert.

The goals of the project must accomplish two things:
1. Overall trending and analysis of key performance
indicators. (Director and above type reports.)

2. Provided the lowest level of detail possible. We must
be able to view record level detail. For example a listing of all the
account numbers sold by a rep for any given time frame or a listing of
the hours worked by a rep day over day for any given time frame.
Basically I need the data before any aggregations are applied.
(Supervisor and manager level reporting.)

The proposed solution is to abandon an existing SQL Server database
for an OLAP only solution - Essebase. The project implementer says
that OLAP can provide the low level details if the cubes are set up
correctly.

Is this correct? I thought OLAP aggregated data into cubes thereby
making trending quicker. Six months of data is about 10 gigs in SQL
server. My fear is an MDBS design that tries to meet both objectives
would be ludicrous. Again my knowledge of OLAP is limited. Please
set me straight.



Thanks in advance.

"csharp_c0d3r" <crystal (AT) captivatedminds (DOT) com> wrote

You can drill to the detail stored in the RDBMS in most OLAP servers,
including Essbase. In other words, the cubes themselves don't need to
store the lowest level of detail, which you leave in SQL.

Of course, if you currently use SQL Server, you could use Analysis
Services which comes with it. This provides similar aggregation options
to Essbase, and will save you from having to buy/use another product.

I agree with Nigel's suggestion. Setting up an OLAP reporting solution in
MSAS would probably be a good idea.. Essbase ain't cheap, and you are
introducing a new system, more integration points, Essbase can be a
difficult system to support, etc.


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