Office Solution Accelerator Excel Add-In for Analysis Services Nick Barclay BI Consultant Tuesday, 22 nd June 2004

So what is it? ► An Excel Add-In − Enables OLAP data to be viewed and manipulated in Excel − Does not use Excel Pivot Table APIs − Provides functionality for two types of reports − Structured − Free-Form − Gives Excel access to server-side AS features − Actions, formatting, drillthrough, member properties, writeback

So what is it? (contd.) ► An Office Solution Accelerator − Continues to increase Office application productivity − Makes data more accessible to the desktop − Like all OSA’s – it’s free (under your current Office license)

Architecture OLAP Cube Analysis Services cube(s) Source and Destination (writeback) OLAP Cube Formula management Query creation and exporting Retrieves and shares cube information Consolidates and executes queries Report layout Report interactions Microsoft Excel Report Builder UI Reporting Add-in Metadata Manager Reporting Add-in Metadata Manager Reporting Add-in Manager Reporting Add-in Manager Cube Metadata Manager Query Manager

DEMO: General Solution Overview

Structured Reports Share many similarities with Pivot Tables ► Strict organisation into rows, columns, pages & data ► Like PT’s one contiguous object ► One cube per report

DEMO: Structured Reports

Structured Reports - Advantages ► Drill Up/Down, Expand/Contract, Isolate/Eliminate ► Custom filter expressions − Top/Bottom count/sum/pct − Multi-levelled logic, =, <>, between ► Pivotability ► Report MetaData functions − STRUCTUREDREPORTGETXML(), STRUCTUREDREPORTGETMDX()

Structured Reports - Limitations ► Can’t hold formatting well ► Single data source at a time ► Can’t insert rows / columns − No non-OLAP data inside report object ► Unable to sort within report

Free-Form ► Put data anywhere, from any cube ► Add extra Excel-based information ► Great for medium to high level data ► Use human readable (and writable) functions to retrieve cube data

DEMO: Free-Form Reports

Free-Form Reports - Advantages ► Multiple OLAP sources (with shared dimensions) − Nest shared dimensions from any cube ► Drop/move anything, anywhere ► 3 OLAP-based Excel functions − CUBECELLMEMBER() − CUBECELLPROPERTY() − CUBECELLVALUE() ► Expand / Collapse dimension members

Free-Form Reports - Limitations ► Can’t use report refresh to add new dimension members − Must re-query (collapse & expand) − ‘Hard-coded’ cell formulas ► Page filters can be a little difficult at times

In summary ► Now able to access more server-side OLAP functionality than previously ► Very much a Power User tool ► Hopefully may become standard Excel feature…? ► Don’t forget about Pivot Tables!! Another good step to further empower Office users and bring BI to the masses

References ► Office Solution Accelerator Home − ► OLAP Tools − Word OLAP Scribe − Excel OLAP Scribe ► OLAP Books − Analysis Services Step by Step – MS Press − Fast Track to MDX - Springer − MDX Solutions - Wiley ►

Questions