Re: OLAP/BI Tools

"Jeff Caspari" wrote:

We have had several requests over the years to interface our database to an
OLAP or BI tool that will allow complex queries, etc.

What jumps to mind are MITS, Applix, Crystal Reports, etc.

We would probably not use ODBC but actually normalize new data every day and
feed into another system running the OLAP tool. This gives us the
flexibility to use any software.

Has anyone had experience with these products? I would be very interested
to hear about it.

Jeff - Some products in and out of the MV market are sold as "BI"
solutions when they are really just complex reporting solutions. The
cost and quality of products varies widely and many of these products
use the term BI just for the wizbang effect or to inflate their
perceived product value. Caveat emptor. For example, someone might
call MS SQL Reporting Services a BI tool but it's a complex data
aggregation and reporting engine. That might be exactly what some
people need though they use the term BI because it sounds better. A
real BI tool will allow you to drill up and down through different
kinds of data. A reporting tool will require you to provide all of
that data for each separate "view", and it will just sort some of the
data differently.

MITS (the company) has really great software (I've been through their
week-long training session) and I recommend at least taking taking a
look at it. I'd like to sit in on a session if you do. These days
they have two products, MITS Report and MITS Discover. Their people
really understand the concept of business intelligence so if you're
really looking for BI they can provide it.

I've interfaced Crystal Reports to MV and SQL Server - just recently
using mv.NET. CR is a reporting tool, not BI. CR allows you to
generate reports or a "dashboard" of existing data, but not to
drill-down to levels that aren't already made available by the
application. CR is used as a front-end viewing engine for "real" BI
products like Business Objects.

I'm sure Ross will have something to say about Visage BIT, and Via
Systems has myViewPoint.

Dunno about Applix.

When your clients say "Business Intelligence", they might be just as
interested in seeing good Excel documents with charts and pivot
tables, etc. As you know I can help with that.

Of course I'd be happy to assist with interfacing your application
data with any of these front-end products. Perhaps Nebula R&D can
offer third-party add-on reporting solutions for your application, so
that you don't need to get into the BI/reporting business?

HTH
T
.

Relevant Pages

  • =?windows-1252?Q?MITS_to_Provide_Business_Intelligence_and_Reporting_?= =?windows-1252?Q?Sol
    ... reporting solutions provider, Management Information Tools, Inc. (dba ... MITS) are pleased to announce MITS compatibility with OpenQM. ... Business Intelligence solutions offer users unprecedented access to ... About Ladybridge Systems ...
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  • [AD] MITS Report Webinars
    ... Webinar: Announcing MITS Report, the Revolutionary New Operational ... Reporting Environment from MITS. ... Channel Solutions Architect ...
    (comp.databases.pick)
  • Re: Report recommendations please
    ... lose the training wheels and learn Crystal Reports or Reporting ... I've been doing reporting for 10 years; ... My dilemma is that I want only somewhat better control over the output ... nonetheless suitable for run-time report definition? ...
    (microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.vb)
  • Atheros wireless problem/ Bash Shell Script
    ... Know a company guilty of software piracy? ... Get PAID up to $1 Million for Confidentially Reporting Software Piracy by an organization. ... Crystal Reports Server 2008 - Powerful Reporting Made Easy ...
    (Ubuntu)
  • Re: Good reporting solution
    ... and they are building a full reporting tool. ... my reporting solutions have been ad-hoc (usually ... > experiences with Crystal Reports isn't all that great. ... > fired up about the crystal report viewer that web clients will have to ...
    (microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.aspnet)
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