Hi all,


We have plans to change our BI environment. At this moment we have SQL
server 2000 with Impromptu.
First of all we are going to use Reporting Services for producing
reports instead of Impromptu.


Besides building reports we need a simple and cheap tool to analyse
data. Somebody adviced us to use Microsoft Data Analyzer.


My questions
* What are the experiences with Microsft Data Analyzer?
* Does Microsoft Data Analyzer also works with SQL 2005
* Who knows other tools to analyze data (drill, swap, slice, dice etc
and share data among others) that aren't to expensive


I hope to hear from you!

http://www.strategycompanion.com/1_2.htm

FYI

Check out http://www.mosha.com/msolap/util.htm -- it's a nice comprehensive
list of all things OLAP.

When our company investigated OLAP software, we limited our search to only
SQL Server 2000 friendly-apps. So, we're using Analysis Services (free OLAP
service that comes with SQL Server 2000), and decided to purchase XLCubed (an
Excel Add-in): www.xlcubed.com. For our analysis needs, it's a very good
product -- we chose not to go with their web edition at this time, however;
consequently, only a handful of employees have XLCubed installed on their
desktops. XLCubed's tech support is excellent.

If we had money to burn, we might have gone with NovaView from Panorma
software (www.panorama.com): the NovaView software had a solution for our
every need, but it came at a price (which we were able to negotiate down
somewhat) that we couldn't justify. Easy to deploy, easy to manage, easy to
use. During our trial period, Panorama also provided very good tech support.
Bottom line, too expensive for our budget even though the product appears to
be one of the best OLAP tools out there.

Overall, I recommend you define your OLAP analysis/reporting needs, establish
measureable criteria, and then test the software against your criteria.
(Using this approach, we quickly found that MS Data analyzer fell quite short
of our needs.) XLCubed proved to be the best bang-for-our-buck; there's very
little it can't do and everything it does is great.

Good luck.
--Pete



Anke wrote:

--
Message posted via http://www.sqlmonster.com

Hi,

Maybe ReportPortal is a very good alternative if Panorama NovaView is
too high for your budget.

You can download a free trial from our website: www.gmsbv.nl

Regards, Marco

Peter Zajkowski via SQLMonster.com schreef: