Hi,
our company is currently assessing Applix Tm1 as it has very good
planning/forecasting capabilities. In particular the ability for users to do
on the fly what-if analysis. Does AS have anything to compete with that? i've
looked at the plug-in for excel but it doesn't seem to offer too much. Can AS
really be used for planning?

since both TM1 and AS ar Memory based and compute calculation on the fly,
the server have indeed very similar capabilities when it come to budgeting
and planning capablities.

As far as Excel based client tool, I'm not sure of what the latest version
of TM1 does, so I couldn't compare, but as far as I know, most everything
that can be done in TM1 can also be done in AS.

Thierry
--
this posting is provided "as is" and with no warranties and confers no
rights.

"DaveK" <DaveK (AT) discussions (DOT) microsoft.com> wrote

Dave

Thierry is right. What can be done within TM1 can be done within Analysis
Services. If you want to see freeform data input using more than one method
to achieve this, then please feel free to contact me for a demonstration of
o2olap. For the record, I believe there is a better and more efficient way
for data entry than TM1. Modeling is a synch, with lower modelng risk, and
faster. You can browse, slice and dice, input and model very easily. You can
create any report you want. You can do your planning and forecasting, even
automate this process like you can in TM1. If you want to talk to users who
have done this with AS then please feel free to let me know. Yes some are
old TM1 users who have moved on to the AS platform.

Things in the OLAP arena have moved on with some new concepts, and more.

Considerations and differences include:

1. The MSAS platform is more widely used and there are and will be a lot
more products and solutions based on the MSAS. MSAS provides a more "OPEN"
platform.
2. There are also more resources from a training and from a staffing point
of view.
3. There is tighter integration to Microsoft products, including developer
tools.
4. Excel reports can automatically format based on AS formats, and more.
5. You are not tied into Rules, most users of which hated with a passion
because of having to optimise with Feeders. As a result a lot of users
avoided these. This process is automated within AS, which is very efficient.
6. You can have and develop custom functions to include within the
equivalent of Rules, namely MDX. Saying this you can also combine existing
available functions in other applications.
7. The cost is a lower. If I remember correctly, the cost for TM1 in the UK
was £5,000 and the US may have been $5,000. Personally I would rather invest
that sort of money in the future.
8. ..... and I could go on. Refer to our web site for more.

Also, we are quite willing to help you convert your TM1 data and solution to
MSAS.

Again, please feel free to contact me for a demonstration. You could be
pleasantly surprised as to what is possible.

Regards
Howard.Taylor@ domain below
www.o2olap.com

PS: Formerly had a consultancy based on TM1 but let our contract lapse.


"DaveK" <DaveK (AT) discussions (DOT) microsoft.com> wrote

In practice TM1 is far better at planning than Analysis Services (I've
used both extensively).

Writeback is faster in TM1.
It is also easier to build the models.

Perhaps someone can explain exactly why TM1 is better at writeback.

From my understanding with TM1 all the writebacks are held in RAM on
the server and written to a log file in case of crash. At a scheduled
time (overnight) the RAM data is written to disc.
With AS although the writebacks are similarly held in RAM they are
also immediately written to a relational table in SQL Server. These
relational writeback tables have to merged into the fact tables.

Is it the case that the writing to these relational tables, as
compared to the log files, explains the difference in performance?

TM1 is the best OLAP platform for planning & AS the best for actuals
from a datawarehouse.

Regards,

John Keeley

www.johnkeeley.com




"DaveK" <DaveK (AT) discussions (DOT) microsoft.com> wrote

Dave

Thierry is right. What can be done within TM1 can be done within Analysis
Services. If you want to see freeform data input using more than one method
to achieve this, then please feel free to contact me for a demonstration of
o2olap. For the record, I believe there is a better and more efficient way
for data entry than TM1. Modeling is a synch, with lower modelng risk, and
faster. You can browse, slice and dice, input and model very easily. You can
create any report you want. You can do your planning and forecasting, even
automate this process like you can in TM1. If you want to talk to users who
have done this with AS then please feel free to let me know. Yes some are
old TM1 users who have moved on to the AS platform and are happy.

Things in the OLAP arena have moved on with some new concepts, and more...

Considerations and differences include:

1. The MSAS platform is more widely used and there are and will be a lot
more products and solutions based on the MSAS. MSAS provides a more "OPEN"
platform.
2. There are also more resources from a training and from a staffing point
of view.
3. There is tighter integration to Microsoft products, including developer
tools.
4. Excel reports can automatically format based on AS formats, and other
variations of this.
5. You are not tied into Rules, which most users hated with a passion
because of having to optimise with Feeders. As a result a lot of users
avoided these. This process is automated within AS, which is very efficient.
6. You can have and develop custom functions to include within the
equivalent of Rules, namely MDX. Saying this you can also combine existing
available functions in other applications.
7. The cost is a lower. If I remember correctly, the cost for TM1 in the UK
was £5,000 and the US may have been $5,000. Personally I would rather invest
that sort of money in the future.
8. ..... and I could go on. Refer to our web site for more.

Also, we are quite willing to help you convert your TM1 data and solution to
MSAS.

Again, please feel free to contact me for a demonstration. You could be
pleasantly surprised as to what is possible.

Regards
Howard.Taylor@ domain below
www.o2olap.com

PS: Formerly had a consultancy based on TM1 but let our contract lapse.

"DaveK" <DaveK (AT) discussions (DOT) microsoft.com> wrote

I agree with John -- Analysis Services has a lot of strengths but it's
nowhere near as good as TM1 for write-back apps. Analysis Services uses
a relational transaction partition to hold the write-backs, and also
zaps the caches when data is committed. This ruins the normally good
query performance. Analysis Services 2000 also doesn't have good
capabilities for planning type calculations, particularly
multi-currency. TM1, being entirely RAM based, and with an excellent
native Excel interface, is much more optimised for such apps.

"John Keeley" <duvinrouge (AT) servihoo (DOT) com> wrote

"Howard Taylor [o2olap]" <ht (AT) xxx (DOT) com> wrote

I agree what Nigel says and partly with what Howard says.

What I felt so frustrating is there is totally no information in
neither books online
or in any of the books on Analysis Services to customers how to model
and
build what-if applications on analysis Services. I am really surprised
that
MS have not released even a few simple scenarios like cost planning or
cash flow planning or sales planning some sample cubes and reports
with
the Excel addin.

There is a big lack of know how on how to model a planning and
budgetting
application on Analysis Services - I guess this is the biggest gap in
AS 2000 if it exists MS as not done any effort in making the user
community
aware of using this feature and none of the authors of a number of
books
on Analysis Services have endeavoured to make this known. It is really
a
sort of mystery how to do it. Many times users want to build some
budgetting,
planning and what-if applications in house and once they outgrow the
AS 2000 and Excel Addin would like to go for something like MIS Plain
or O2OLAP or whatever but even to do basic things there is no starter
models.

Perhaps if MS could take this onboard and do something.

Thanks
Karen

"Karen Middleton" <karenmiddleol (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote

I think the reason is probably that Analysis Services 2000 isn't often
used for planning apps, and when it is, it's usually in conjunction with
pre-built apps such as OutlookSoft Everest, Geac MPC or CIP ES, which
deal with a lot of the tricky functional/performance issues. Some
consultants have also developed techniques based on hard experience, but
I guess they don't want to give them away freely.

Of course, a lot will change with Yukon, which would also explain why
people may not be interested in documenting such techniques for what is
now a four year old product.

Nigel

Please feel free to correct me on any facts that may be incorrect or
out-dated.

I would expect you to know how to do a TM1 currency translation as I
personally trained your former work colleagues / friends down in Bristol (rc
& k [ex cs]) around 1994/5 on how to do this. They have since become fairly
senior and are possibly even shareholders in Applix. ..Are they?.... You may
also have been shown by your former partner. The question I want to ask is,
"Have you managed, or they, to replicate the same technique within Analysis
Services?" If not, have you seen this technique replicated by anyone else in
the Analysis Services environment as your statement suggests you have? If
so, could you supply the performance figures using the same data set and
same model structure and technique for the two products in question. If
there are any differences in consideration then could you detail these as
well please.

If you have not, it is all possible and has been done.

Further, you mention that Analysis Services doesn't have good capabilities
for planning type calculations. Excluding the currency translations, which
has been addressed above, which planning type scenarios cannot be catered
for in your opinion in Analysis Services 2000. There is possibly only one
that I am aware of that may not be catered for within AS, or a product using
AS as its underlying technolgy, but this is not material and can be worked
around. All other scenarios are possible. Saying this, I will definitely
give it a go and try to put it into o2olap. I became aware of this when one
of the TM1 resellers approached me recently and informed me of the
functionality whilst also asking if something else was possible in AS, which
it is. There are however, other techniques being used within products that
are using MSAS that are not available, or harder to replicate, or need to be
coded, or modelled within a TM1 environment.

I am not sure if TM1 is still restricted to the 16 dimensions or not, this
may have changed with a later version, or with the 64 bit version, i.e. if
this is available. With MSAS 2000, which has a limit of 64 dimensions, you
do now see cubes using significantly more dimensions as the nature of some
of the OLAP applications/solutions expand and diversify. Whether the cubes
are best structured the way they are is another discussion. But, the needs,
objectives and practicality for the general user need to be considered. As
you have previously identified, RAM based application are also "limited in
their data capacity". Hence as a platform, why would you want to have more
than one OLAP platform for different tasks and scenarios. Double the
training, support, software costs, etc. With the explosion of data being
available and analysed I do not see many products competing with MSAS, other
than potentially ... Also, the next release of MSAS, SQL 2005 (Yukon) makes
data even more available than before. I think your market statistics
confirms
the peoples choice.

MSAS also handles non-unique members in dimensions which is not possible in
TM1. As a result you generally have to create and maintain mappings for TM1
where your data souce has non-unique members. Hence there could be a bit
more work for integration and setup.

Also, you mention about write-back apps not being as good as TM1. If you are
NOT looking at all the apps in the market, then you should not really make
that general sweeping comment to this effect. You are exposed to numerous
products and users are aware of that and appreciate your commentary. But,
you can only comment on what you know or what you are exposed to. We
have had another MSAS product demoed to us by a joint reseller. It had a
really nice front-end solution based approach, which for salesmen is great.
However, 1 day per report is the norm for their consultancy.... mmm. This
is excessive and if you are not able to create and/or model you report in
MSAS in minutes, then users should be looking elsewhere.

Saying this, AS 2000 has room for improvement, but there are techniques to
help AS within Excel. There is a comment on our website that comes from a
very
experience TM1 consultant who has used o2olap, and possibly even prefers
o2olap's Excel interface to TM1. The comments were made some time ago and
things have
progressed since then. http://www.o2olap.com/o2olap_Market_Comments.htm.

Our general advice to users is to try all the products, but ensure you know
all the facts and not just those that people want you to know. Models can
be quick to create in MSAS. Increasingly so with SQL 2005.

Regards

Howard.Taylor@ domain below
www.o2olap.com



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

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

Hi Nigel

Thanks for providing your views can you please recommend some
consultants do they have a web presence that we can buy these planning
and budgetting modelling and know how tips and tricks from them.

Thanks
Karen