Hi all,

for some Mid-Size companies I am looking for a good front end solutions that
can be fed with MS SQL Analysis Services (2000 and/or 2005). The tool needs
to support the typical reportings, i.e. summaries, graphs, drilldowns etc.

Is somebody in this forum aware of a relatively low-cost tool that supports
true OLAP access (no data im- and exporting other than from online access on
the OLAP-Database) and can be a positive ROI within small companies with
1-10 Client licenses per site?

The data are already in MS SQL Server / Analysis Services and just wait to
get on the screen of non-power users in a comfortable way.

Tim

Have you looked at Microsoft's Reporting Services? It consumes MDX
queries and functions or straight up SQL code and renders the typical
and not-so typical reportings, similar to those you mentioned above. MS
also just released Business Scorecard Manager 2005 which lends itself
nicely as a front-end BI tool for OLAP cubes (as well as relational
databases). For the power & ease of use that the end user experiences,
you would think the cost would be fairly sizable. But it's not! The
server license cost is $5000 and the per CAL = $175/user. Comparatively
speaking, this is relatively cheap when overlayed with the cost of
other BI solutions like those modules offered by Cognos, Hyperion and
Business Objects.

Take a look at Matrix from DataJungle. It does dashboards and full OLAP
analysis...much cheaper and simpler to implement than ProClarity.

"CyberSmarty" wrote:

(datajungle...)
and much less capabilities too ;-)
there is no full olap analysis (cannot create calculated measures, create
calculated sets, only 1 dimension by axis...)
but for the price its enough compared to a proclarity pricing.

also look at DSPanel.
which provides interesting dashboard capabilities within sharepoint for a
real low price.

also there is novaview, reportportal, snowflake (intellimerce), cognos,
business objects, strategycompanion, usoft.
(http://sqljunkies.com/WebLog/mosha/a...egory/357.aspx)


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

you will get what you pay for, but if you are looking for "cheap" than
i recommend sticking with the MSFT tools, like BSM and SRS.
if you are looking for full functionality and flexibility, i'd
investigate proclarity. the current version supports both SQL 2000 and
2005 and designed to simplify the Unified Dimensional Model (UDM). the
pricing for proclarity is not unreasonable by any means, and ideal for
mid-size businesses.
- i don't see any indication that data jungle, cognos, or business
objects are fully integrated with SQL 2005 when i look at their
websites.

ProClarity are the only BI vendor to go to market with the majority of the
new functionality from SQL2005 available now.

Which is why they were chosen for Project REAL.
"aeiouy" <jasonaeiou (AT) yahoo (DOT) com> wrote

Hi,

If you need only support of both MS SQL Server 2000 + 2005 there are a
lot of supporting frontends.

Cheap:
- Excel pivot table services (2000 + 2005 support)

Low:
- DS Panel (2000 + 2005 support)
- ReportPortal (2000 + 2005 support)

Reasonable:
- Panorama NovaView (2000 + 2005 support)
- ProClarity (2000 + 2005 support)

Visit www.gmsbv.nl and order your free trials of above mentioned
solutions.

We have now also a synchronized Pivot table solution in Excel.

Regards, Marco

based off the sample I pointed you to on my Blog?

--
Regards
Darren Gosbell [MCSD]
Blog: http://www.geekswithblogs.net/darrengosbell

I think BSM = Business Scorecard Manager
but what's SRS ?
Is it Sequence Retrieval System as in biotechnology?
Is it Site Replication Service?
those are not relavant to BI, however.
as you mention MSFT tools = Microsoft tools, I can't figure out what
SRS is.
If you mean SQL Server Reporting Service, it'd be SSRS as in SSAS,
SSIS, etc., not SRS.