March 7, 2012 at 11:45 am
OK, so I've been using SSRS and SSIS for a while and decided I ought to learn SSAS. I've spent some time going through a tutorial or two and have come up with a few dummy projects of my own. So far I'm totally happy with designing cube. Great.
The bit where I'm struggling is when I come to deploy. The actual deployment is fine (just right click and select "deploy" but then the only place I can see the cube in on the Browser Tab of the IDE. That's fine for me, but how would my user see it? I struggle to believe that I'm expected to give my users an ide each and tell them to load up the project. That would be totally unsuitable for them. And the fact that the tab is called "Browser" strongly implies that they'd use through a web browser, which is what I'd have expected. But I can't find any info on what URL they'd use to see my deployed cube. All the tutorials just direct me to the Browser Tab.
Can anyone point me in the right direction on this?
March 7, 2012 at 12:03 pm
FunkyDexter (3/7/2012)
OK, so I've been using SSRS and SSIS for a while and decided I ought to learn SSAS. I've spent some time going through a tutorial or two and have come up with a few dummy projects of my own. So far I'm totally happy with designing cube. Great.The bit where I'm struggling is when I come to deploy. The actual deployment is fine (just right click and select "deploy" but then the only place I can see the cube in on the Browser Tab of the IDE. That's fine for me, but how would my user see it? I struggle to believe that I'm expected to give my users an ide each and tell them to load up the project. That would be totally unsuitable for them. And the fact that the tab is called "Browser" strongly implies that they'd use through a web browser, which is what I'd have expected. But I can't find any info on what URL they'd use to see my deployed cube. All the tutorials just direct me to the Browser Tab.
Can anyone point me in the right direction on this?
The best way (imho) to share the contents of a cube is through Excel. Excel allows a user to browse cubes easily and with a lot of freedom, and assuming you don't have writeback enabled you can rest assure that the data is accessed in a read-only fashion.
The other common way to share cube data is through the creation of SSRS reports. You can create a datasource to a cube in SSRS, and use MDX to query the cube. It is a bit more restrictive in the sense that you define the fields and layout of the report upfront, and users have limited abilities to change the view of the data.
Another method is through Report Builder which is a little more restrictive than Excel, but more flexible than a regular SSRS report.
And then of course you could also develop/code your own custom application in vb/vb.net/asp.net etc. to make a cube accessible to end-users. For obvious reasons this method is less common because of the time/effort aspect.
March 7, 2012 at 12:16 pm
there are many many MANY BI tools out there for users. If cost is an issue, Excel is a decent choice at least to get started.
We have Targit and Tableau inhouse and are looking to maybe standardize on something else. We're newer in our DS effort so haven't settled on the one tool that works great for both our users and our developers. We are in fact looking to bring in a consultant to help us navigate the BI tool landscape to identify what might be best given our environment and end-user needs.
If you can go to a BI conference, it could be well worth your time to make the rounds of the vendor booths to assess potential tools/costs, etc.
March 8, 2012 at 12:16 am
As already mentioned, a lot of options exist.
Excel is the most notorious one, where you can create a PivotTable on top of your cube.
Most BI clients can connect to SSAS. Not only SSRS and Report Builder, but also PowerPivot and other vendors, such as Tableau and Cognos for example.
The browser option in Visual Studio or SSMS is just for debugging 🙂
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March 8, 2012 at 12:27 pm
Sorry but I don't think I've made myself clear. It's not the data I want to share - that's trivial. It's the cube as I've designed it in SSAS, with all the dimension hierarchys, freindly labels etc. Essentially I want to give the user the same (or similar) experience to the one I get on the Browser tab of Visual Studio.
Am I miss-understanding the purpose of SSAS? I mean the underlying data is easy to share and, as long as it's properly structured in data cubes and dimensions, yes I could just run a query straight into excel and start emailing that about. Even easier I could just show them how to set up a data source in excel. But SSAS hasn't come into that scenario at all yet. From the tutorials I've gone through it seems to me that SSAS is about defining an experience that helps my user(s) play with that data. It's about giving the various elements meaningful names and establishing the hierarchies for the dimensions. If I can't actually share that experience with my users then what was the point in me defining those things?
March 8, 2012 at 1:05 pm
FunkyDexter (3/8/2012)
Sorry but I don't think I've made myself clear. It's not the data I want to share - that's trivial. It's the cube as I've designed it in SSAS, with all the dimension hierarchys, freindly labels etc. Essentially I want to give the user the same (or similar) experience to the one I get on the Browser tab of Visual Studio.Am I miss-understanding the purpose of SSAS? I mean the underlying data is easy to share and, as long as it's properly structured in data cubes and dimensions, yes I could just run a query straight into excel and start emailing that about. Even easier I could just show them how to set up a data source in excel. But SSAS hasn't come into that scenario at all yet. From the tutorials I've gone through it seems to me that SSAS is about defining an experience that helps my user(s) play with that data. It's about giving the various elements meaningful names and establishing the hierarchies for the dimensions. If I can't actually share that experience with my users then what was the point in me defining those things?
Yes yes. When users connect to a SSAS cube with a PivotTable, they get the same experience. They will see your labels, hierarchies and whatever. The same goes up for all the other tools that are mentioned.
(hint: open up excel, go to the data tab, select from other sources and choose Analysis Services. Locate your cube, insert a pivottable and play with the data. Be amazed)
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March 9, 2012 at 2:02 am
Oh, I see! That sounds exactly what I'm after. I'll give it a try this evening and see how I get on. Thanks to everyone for the information.
March 9, 2012 at 5:25 am
Ya you are right its not like a SSRS where will give web link to user once its got deployed.
Initially i also expecting same interface of BIDS for end user ...:-) But there are similar tools which will help us to work wit cube data but Its not equal to BIDS designer.
Some of the tools which is used for cube browsing: Proclarity,Excel 2007(supports KPI) ,SSRS (Static reports),Report Builder ....
Check the link
which shows excel cube browsing with screen shots.
March 9, 2012 at 6:18 am
if you are looking for a web browser interface
take a look at http://www.kyubit.com/
I dont use it, nor am I in any way associated with it, but I did evaluate(briefly) it a while back and it seemed quite useful.
didnt deploy, cos to be quite frank, most of our users cannot understand the concept of slice/dice/summarise/drillthro....static reports for most of them :crazy:
________________________________________________________________
you can lead a user to data....but you cannot make them think
and remember....every day is a school day
March 9, 2012 at 6:30 am
J Livingston SQL (3/9/2012)
didnt deploy, cos to be quite frank, most of our users cannot understand the concept of slice/dice/summarise/drillthro....static reports for most of them :crazy:
It can indeed sometimes be a bit frustrating to work in BI.
"Look at those nice graphical way to explore your data!"
"Nah. Just give us a report. We'll export it to excel..."
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March 9, 2012 at 7:13 am
Just tried using excel against a simple cube a colleague had created previously and it looks like exactly what I was after. I've got a slightly more involved cube at home so I'm going to have a further play tonight but everything definitely makes a lot more sense now.
I guess a web interface would be nice (and was what I expected) but it's not necessary for my scenario and excel should do just fine. It'll be on all the users machines anyway so no extra deployment issues and the fact that the users are already familar with it will be a big bonus.
The main reason I want this is to help cut down the number analysis reports we get disguised and report requests. They'll get used once and then forgotton about. If we can train up a few of the more techy users to use SSRS (which should be quite easy, they already do the equivalent in excel) then they can resolve alot of these themselves without the need to get a report written which they don't really want.
Thanks for all the input, guys. Much apreciated.
March 9, 2012 at 7:17 am
If you really want a web interface you can try Cognos Analysis Studio.
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My blog at https://sqlkover.com.
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March 9, 2012 at 7:55 am
For me also my first wading into cubes was in order to create "self-serve reporting" to prevent the one-off report designing. We didn't have the resources to do that so I opted to put the data delivery needs right into the users' hands. What they loved most was "running hunches", which really showed the value of the cube to them.
If you can create some report developers, all the better!!
March 9, 2012 at 10:56 am
"running hunches",
Yeah, I think that's the real benefit to the company. They won't really understand that until they get it and start playing though. I'm selling the idea on the principle of a reduced work load (which will also definitely be a benefit) but, once they get hold of it, I'm hoping their eyes will open and I'll get some REAL brownie points.:-)
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