Am I right in saying that Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services. is a competing product to Business Objects to some degree. I looked into it and the OLAP Cube builder in Analysis Services is similar to the Universe Designer in BO.
Am I right in saying that the Universes in Business Objects are types of OLAP cubes or have I missed the mark and talking mince?
Thanks
rdjmoose 
(BOB member since 2005-08-08)
Analysis Services is a competing product. Universes are not types of OLAP cubes. They provide a semantic layer between the database and the user. Which really means that instead of your user having to write SQL, they can drag and drop objects and SQL is generated āon the flyā behind the scenes.
Nick Daniels (BOB member since 2002-08-15)
I donāt believe they are really competing products as much as some people think.
If you really want drag and drop ad-hoc questions, BO is better. MS OLAP is a great cube product.
The reality is that BO does a really nice job of using MS SQL Server and MS OLAP.
BO can very nicely use the cubes that MS OLAP creates.
Steve Krandel 
(BOB member since 2002-06-25)
So would buying Analysis services be a complimentary addition to business intelligence solutions.
If our company was to use OLAP cubes then Business Objects could query these and the reports be generated much quicker.
When I looked at SQL Server Analysis the process for creating a cube was similar to buildin g universe in BO.
What do you think?
rdjmoose (BOB member since 2005-08-08)
I agree with Steve that they are not really targeting the same customer base. One major drawback of the Microsoft BI solution is that it is very platform-dependent! Most medium to large organizations have heterogenous environment and therefore, Microsoft can never be able to provide enterprise BI solution to these organizations.
Having said that, AS (Analysis Services) is a very good OLAP tool and it works well with BusinessObjects XI. If you want an inexpensive OLAP tool, AS is the one to go. But of course, you need to buy the SQL Server licenses.
substring (BOB member since 2004-01-16)
We have the SQL Server licenses but will we need to buy the additional Analysis Services licenses or is it free with the license??
So can someone explain what OLAP is in a simple terms then. Is an OLAP cube data stored in a format that is efficient to query?
rdjmoose (BOB member since 2005-08-08)
Just wondering what this is based on. At my current client they are using AS with BO and it is working horribly in 6.1.3. I am currently looking at it in XI and it does not look any better. From everything we are hearing BO is planning on dropping most of its OLAP support besides OLAPi and Crystal. Rumors of universes connecting to OLAP but that remains to be seen.
cparsons 
(BOB member since 2004-02-20)
If you want my $.02 - Donāt bother looking at SQL 2000 Analysis Services. Nice tool but SQL 2005 (Yukon) is in CTP (community technical preview - beyone beta and very close to production) and on schedule to for a November release. Our resident OLAP expert attended training at Microsoft a few months ago and has nothing but praise for SQL 2005. Reporting Services is also MUCH better in 2005.
The issue I have going with a BO only solution is putting all your egg in one basketĀ We can change our ETL tool, database backend, reporting or data mining tool with relative ease. We can also access the data from a variety of tools (custom developed apps, office web components, web servicesĀ ) IĀm not sure how easy this is using a BO OLAP, ETL, and Reporting implementation.
GaryV (BOB member since 2004-03-29)
Iāll see your $.02, and raise you a penny smile ! I too am impressed with SQL Server 2005. Iām not saying it will immediately replace Oracle, Teradata, etc. in truly large deployments, but it will bring a powerful solution to small / medium / āpretty bigā deployments.
I also canāt argue that SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) 2005 is āMUCHā better, but then thatās not saying a lot. No doubt the fact that itās free (included with SQL Server) will help. From my reading though, itās not quite as free as you might think. SSRS (like any serious BI package) needs to be on a separate server from the database for reasonable performance, and that means another SQL server license. Also, any semi-serious report development is pretty much limited to the IT pros, since development is done using the Visual Studio development environment. That can be daunting to even the most experienced ābusiness power user.ā
Will SSRS be a significant player? I expect Microsoft to continue improving the product, and will probably do so rather quickly, but I donāt think itās an instant threat to the current top tier vendors.
Iām not sure I follow you here. I think using independent solutions (like BusObj, Cognos, Microstrategy) is the definition of not putting all of your eggs in one basket. Microsoft SSRS, the Oracle BI offerings, even the built-in reporting solutions in ERP packages can be capable, but are a bit limiting when you need to go outside that specific environment.
Dwayne Hoffpauir (BOB member since 2002-09-19)