March 9, 2012 at 9:27 am
Hi All,
Are there better ways to perform reporting from Analysis Services cubes than to write a number of MDX queries to display data in an interactive UI? For example to pull some stats for today, yesterday, last week, last month, year to date.
Is there a way to write dynamic MDX?
Is there something in Analysis services like parameterized stored procedures in SQL Server Engine?
Thanks
March 9, 2012 at 9:38 am
I'd probably call that better way a "front end, user tool", and yes there's several. Oftenthe easiest option is Excel, with 2010 giving you a fair amount of functionality. Sharepoint now has PerformancePoint built in, so you can consume there also. To an extent, the stored proc approach you're describing is simply 'a report' - the MDX is saved in the report, you run it next month and the MTD figure is as at the current date in that month.
Steve.
March 9, 2012 at 11:23 am
stevefromOZ (3/9/2012)
I'd probably call that better way a "front end, user tool", and yes there's several. Oftenthe easiest option is Excel, with 2010 giving you a fair amount of functionality. Sharepoint now has PerformancePoint built in, so you can consume there also. To an extent, the stored proc approach you're describing is simply 'a report' - the MDX is saved in the report, you run it next month and the MTD figure is as at the current date in that month.
Thanks Steve. So for a number of dashboard reports, which change based on selected parameters you'd recommend MDX and Reporting Services?
March 9, 2012 at 12:21 pm
I would probably lean towards dashboard designer in SharePoint2010 if i had access to it, if I was specifically looking to create dashboards. You could definitely still do this in SSRS though, but the 'dash-ness' may not be as easy to accomplish.
A sample/walkthrough for how to build a dash using SP2010 is here.
Another, using SSRS reports as content in the dash, is here.
HTH
Steve.
March 9, 2012 at 12:34 pm
stevefromOZ (3/9/2012)
I would probably lean towards dashboard designer in SharePoint2010 if i had access to it, if I was specifically looking to create dashboards. You could definitely still do this in SSRS though, but the 'dash-ness' may not be as easy to accomplish.A sample/walkthrough for how to build a dash using SP2010 is here.
Another, using SSRS reports as content in the dash, is here.
HTH
This is great info. What I'm after though is a way to diplay data in a web app. For example, a portal that reports on the number of sales for our customers. The data would get pulled from our cube depending on which customer logs in and what type of report they would choose. So this would be client facing data, not internal. I know there are some tools that can be used for this but probably most straight forward would be predefined MDX? Thanks again.
March 9, 2012 at 1:20 pm
ahhh, gotcha. Well, you could use predefined MDX, maybe using SSRS still (local reports vs using report server instance). Alternative would be to look at Dundas or equiv for one of their web controls that renders data nicely. Possibly use a hard-coded mdx query to populate the dataset that's then tied to the display control.
Steve.
March 9, 2012 at 2:25 pm
stevefromOZ (3/9/2012)
ahhh, gotcha. Well, you could use predefined MDX, maybe using SSRS still (local reports vs using report server instance). Alternative would be to look at Dundas or equiv for one of their web controls that renders data nicely. Possibly use a hard-coded mdx query to populate the dataset that's then tied to the display control.
Again great info, will look into these. Thanks.
April 7, 2012 at 3:39 pm
stevefromOZ (3/9/2012)
ahhh, gotcha. Well, you could use predefined MDX, maybe using SSRS still (local reports vs using report server instance). Alternative would be to look at Dundas or equiv for one of their web controls that renders data nicely. Possibly use a hard-coded mdx query to populate the dataset that's then tied to the display control.
Steve,
Currently we use regular stored procs to pull data from tables to display in the UI. Procs have several parameters which are passed in from the UI. We'd like to replace those procs with a solution using Analysis Services. The only solution that comes into my mind is to use .NET Stored Procedures with MDX. Is there a better solution, something where you can pass in user input and return results from the cube? Something reusable and extendeble so that it can be used for many reports.
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