Hi,

We are in the process of evaluating a font-end OLAP tool...

Can users of Crystal Analysis Pro and Microsoft Data Analyzer please
share their suggestions regarding the comparison between these two.

I will be very grateful. We are also considering/evaluating a few other
products but in this post am very much interested in answer to the above
question.

Many thanks in advance.

These products aren't direct competitors. MS Data Analyzer is a
specialist tool for comparing multiple dimensions at once. You should
only consider it after first getting a normal multidimensional
front-end. MS-DA isn't useful for producing normal multidimensional
reports and charts. And it doesn't look like it has a future, as it's
not been updated since Microsoft acquired it in 2001.

Crystal Analysis is one of the general purpose OLAP front-ends, but it
doesn't usually score very highly. Among respondents to The OLAP Survey
3 (http://www.survey.com/olap), users of this tool reported lower levels
of business achievement than those using any other Analysis Services
front-end. Most people using it got it along with Crystal Enterprise,
rather than through a proper evaluation against other Analysis Services
front-ends.

Three better tools are ProClarity, NovaView and Executive Viewer, as
well as the several third party Excel add-ins. You should certainly
evaluate one or more of these before even looking at Crystal Analysis or
Data Analyzer.

"Learner" <wantnospam (AT) email (DOT) com> wrote

Learner

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"Learner" <wantnospam (AT) email (DOT) com> wrote