April 5, 2011 at 1:10 pm
Let me start by saying that I have never used Analysis Services. As a developer (primarily), I haven't seen the need, nor has anyone else in our small IT shop. However, in a short period of time I'm going to have to take over some of my boss's reporting responsibilities. As I understand it, preparing the reports that he has to do on a quarterly basis takes up a great deal of time. He also does monthly reports, but I don't think they take up as much time.
Anyway, I've been a member of SQL Server Central for a few years now, and get Steve's daily emails I've read some of the articles about Analysis Services, and I get the fefeelinghat they are valuable for generating reports. The prospect of having to do my boss' job, in addition to my own job, is really daunting, so I'm looking for ways of helping me with it. I'm hoping that Analysis Services can help.
My boss has developed some queries that he runs, by hand, for some reports. I think he has written some stored procedures to help for other reports, but again, he runs these all by hand. I'm guessing he runs these queries and SP's, gets the results and plugs them into some canned Word documents and Excel spreadsheets. He's described what he does to me, at a high level, and that's what I understand that he does. Soon I'll be learning how he does it, so that I can cover for him while he's gone for an extended period of time.
So much for background, now I'll get to my questions. First, am I correct, will Analysis Services help in generating these reports?
Second, how do I even know if Analysis Services is installed in our SQL Server 2005 environment?
Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.
April 5, 2011 at 1:28 pm
A quick way to determine is a default install of SSAS is installed is to run the following from command line
telnet <server_name> 2383
If it connects then chances are you have SSAS installed on the default port then you can go to Sql Server Management Studio (SSMS) and do an Analysis Services connection using the the server name found.
I personally find anaysis services works great as long as you can get the information into a Star Schema. You may want to start with Excel 2010 and use PowerPivot ( http://www.powerpivot.com/ ) first.
April 6, 2011 at 8:32 am
I guess it worked. I tried the telnet command you gave, it cleared my command window and that was all. I'm taking it to me that the lack of any error messages meant it worked, so probably SSAS is installed.
I'll have to install Office 2010 and give it a try. Thank you for the feedback.
Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.
April 6, 2011 at 2:30 pm
Sorry yes. The following would be an example of a failure...yes if you get a blank screen then yes you are connected.
Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.
C:\>telnet neverland 2383
Connecting To neverland...Could not open connection to the host, on port 2383: Connect failed
C:\>
April 7, 2011 at 11:25 am
Rod,
Sorry for asking, but are you sure you need SSAS not SSRS (Reporting Services) to create these reports? From your description (queries, SPs) I did not get why do you need Analysis Services at all ?
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