My company currently employs a bespoke reporting system written in ASP and
VB6 talking directly to a relational sql server database. Over 1000 people
log in and view reports every day. There are hundreds of reports, and access
to reports and data view is tightly controlled on a per user basis.

We are looking at migrating to an OLAP system with an off the shelf
reporting engine, perhaps with a thin bespoke layer over the top.

The corporate decison is edging towards a Terradata warehouse, Cognos cubes
and Cognos ReportNet, but I think I would prefer to keep SQL with Analysis
Services and Reporting Services. A few of my my perceptions are:
1. Analysis Services will perform better with very large data volumes.
2. We have fairly complex business rules for aggregation which will be
served well with MDX custom rollups, where as I'm not sure Cognos is so
flexible.
3. Reporting Services could kill ReportNet in a couple of years. RS is a bit
immature at the moment, but its integration with analysis services is already
pretty flexible. It will receive massive investment and support, and will be
heavily used as it is free once you've paid your SQL licence.
4. Most of our developers come from the Microsoft world and will be more at
home with Microsoft technologies.

Am I right, and are there any further points people could add? From looking
through discussions here and in the Reporting Services group it seems there
are very few people who are familiar with more than one major OLAP tools
provider. Is there anyone who has used both Cognos and Analysis Services and
is able to comment?

you talk about terradata... so I presume you have a huge amount of data.
so don't go with PP cubes!!!
The web client tool is good, but the cube himself can't serve you.
The Cognos client can use AS cube.

Reportnet is fullfly multilingual (front end, metadata and data), in big
companies, this could be interesting. its very easy to create a sweet report
other the web. But the administration process is long (creating the metadata
is slower than creating a cube, but its for reporting, not OLAP access)

Reporting Services is more like Crystal report than a reportnet application.
But using Reporting Services with Proclarity or Panorama is great. A user
create an anlysis, then the user publish the result in RS as a standard
report available to all other users at "no cost".

in an other side, SQL server 2005 will provide more features. More like
Microstrategy capabilities (1 metadata to access OLAP cubes and SQL
reporting)

As you says, if you are complex calculation, AS is the solution for you. But
actually, AS is not good with a high number of users (except the 64bit
edition) on big cubes.
Due to your "high" number of users, the snapshot capability of RS is good
for you.

Cognos PP is good to create cube to send by email and to play offline, but
PP is very less secure than AS.
Cognos PP can be used only with Cognos products, AS can be used with "all"
the olap tools on the market.

From a developper side, Reportnet, PP, AS and RS provides webservices
access, so you can reuse all the information available. But the communauty
around Microsoft products is far away bigger than Cognos.

I've installed these 2 products, and I love the administration side of AS
(also I love capabilities, performance, stability) and the frontend of
Cognos. (but there is some other great front end application on the market).

Cognos PP doesn't support all AS capabilities (like write back, drill
through, actions...) and SQL 2005 will provide a better drill through.
Because its an open beta (for MSDN subscribers), try it.

What I recommand is to create a proof of concept.
Ask Cognos to make a proof of concept based on some "complex" requirements
(1000 licenses... they come to you without problem!)
and then compare yourself.
after, ask your financial team to get the budget ;-)

"Dave Morrow" <DaveMorrow (AT) discussions (DOT) microsoft.com> a écrit dans le message
de news: 610BF6EC-738F-4FA2-8459-9472195F42A9...soft (DOT) com...

Cognos PP cubes provide a way to do a drill through. but you have to prepare
Impromtu reports, I've not tested this feature other the web and under
reportnet.

If the decision is made at a higher level, then you have to analyze and
present more products. also, analyze carefully the time to create a project.
you have to "pay" between 50% to 100% of the product price in implementation
costs.

For your MDX question, unfortunatly Cognos doesn't support this feature (or
only in new release, but I've never seen any interface to type any query).
Sometimes this lack cause some big problems, because you don't know how
cognos prepare the query for a report. In a Cognos project, generally a user
always ask me "I know I've a new client, but my report doesn't display it,
why?" the answer is simple: regarding how the user play in the cube cognos
keep in memory "you want to view client X and Y" instead-of "you want to
view all clients except client Z", so, when the client A appear in the cube,
the report doesn't display it! its just a little frustrating. but this case
appear more in the client server edition.

Reportnet is an SQL generator (Like Business Objects universes), but, like
BO its a single pass query system. Microstrategy is a multipass query
system, a multipass system allow the user to create "complex" queries and
send the process at the database level instead-of in the SQL generator
server memory. For example, Microstrategy create some temporary tables to
aggregate data around 1 measure, then do the same job for a second measure
and the create an SQL query to retrieve the final result by joining these 2
temporary tables. this help you when you have a huge volume. (the average
datawarehouse size of a microstrategy project is 100Gb; 8gb for BO; 1Gb for
Cognos! but with reportnet, Cognos can support higher volumes)

There is a few years ago, BO and Cognos had more designed as departmental
solutions. but reportnet can get the enterprise wide flag.

Another point, Cognos provide all the tools to create quickly a datamart and
the associated cubes through an ETL tool. But I know that, in big projects
this tool is bad.

If you want a support from Microsoft, ask the sales team of your region,
they help you!
Here Microsoft do an excellent job for us.

Have you try to convert your application in ASP.NET? (and XSLT).
The caching capabilities, multithreading and asynchronous access will help
you to improve the performance.
Maybe, start to use ADOMD.NET to access analysis services. with SQL Server
2005 you'll gain more functionalities in ADOMD.NET :
KPIs, reporting and OLAP capabilities all in one! and all through MDX
syntax!


"Dave Morrow" <DaveMorrow (AT) discussions (DOT) microsoft.com> a écrit dans le message
de news: 3667AA46-DF34-4203-9B2D-51224BC04AEC...soft (DOT) com...

Hi,

with using AS,
you'll be independent in your choice of your (reporting) frontend.
(ReportingServices, dynasight, ReportNET ......)

I (on my one) had heavy performance problems with building PP-Cubes
some years ago. But this must not be a problem of the current version.

So I agree to most of your points.
The only thing, I (of cause) don't think, is that the Reporting
Services will become a poper frontend soon.


Regards
Thomas

----------------------------
http://www.dynasight.net
http://www.antares-is.de

"minimax" <minimax (AT) dynasight (DOT) net> wrote

ReportNet currently doesn't work with either PowerPlay or Analysis
Services cubes. The only 'cubes' it currently supports are SAP BW
InfoCubes.

reportnet doesn't support direct access to cubes, but allow the usage of PP
web under reportnet (through frame/iframe)

But I'm surprised, because at the launch of reportnet, Cognos as presented a
roadmap which completly integrate all the technologies under reportnet
(including OLAP capabilities). But these features are not currently merged
in reportnet.

Ask Cognos about this to know if this merge process is still planed, and
when.

from the Cognos website, Reportnet 1.1 improove the integration, but the
website doesn't explain if its possible to create a report based on an olap
cube.

"Nigel Pendse" <nigelp.nospam (AT) olapreport (DOT) com> a écrit dans le message de
news: ul0teCBmEHA.3968 (AT) TK2MSFTNGP11 (DOT) phx.gbl...