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Teo Lachev is a consultant, mentor, and author focusing on the design and development of Microsoft .NET business intelligence solutions. Read about Teo's work and life. Registered users can post comments.

Kudos to Report Builder as UDM Client

Its UDM support limitations withstanding (a partial list here), the Report Builder should definitely be on your list if your requirements call for ad-hoc reporting from an SSAS 2005 cube. Here are some Report Builder features that I particularly like:

  1. Ability to pre-filter the data on the report before the report is run. In comparison, Excel takes the optimistic approach to load all dimension members before allowing you to set a filter. This can surely send Excel in a la-la land if your cube has large dimensions (hundred thousand or more).
  2. Support of calculated columns. For some obscure reasons, the Excel UI doesn't have an UI interface for creating calculated members (you can do so programmatically however).
  3. Standard report look and feel. In comparison, Excel limits the user to the PivotTable fixed layout (assuming that the user doesn't convert the report to formulas).
  4. My Reports which allows the business user to save her reports in her own area of the report catalog if she doesn't have rights to write to other folders.
  5. Nice filter support. This may not be so obvious but each SSAS attribute hierarchy supports an InstanceSelection property which the Report Builder honors. For example, the attached image shows what happens if you set InstanceSelection to List or FilterList (no UI difference between the two). Another filter UI selection is dropdown.

Of course, the Report Builder-UDM integration will improve in future releases (believe me, I am banging hard on the SSRS-SSAS integration door) to make it even more compelling choice for UDM reporting.

Only published comments... Jan 11 2007, 12:46 PM by tlachev
Attachment: filter.png

Comments

 

cwbrandsma said:

I have used it pretty extensively as well.  It has some nice features, but an insane number of bugs and quirks.

Here is my current list of gripes with the product:

http://www.chrisbrandsma.com/2006/09/analysis-services-annoyances.html

I'll be adding more as I find them.

Luckily, most of my issues are development related and can be fixed by the report creator.  Plus, the seem to have no apparent production implications.

January 11, 2007 2:20 PM
 

tlachev said:

About 3), you can have calculated members as well. Also, you can have a crosstab report with dimension members. Finally, you can bypass the Analysis Services provider and use the OLE DB Provider for Analysis Services 9.0. Then, you can plug in whatever MDX query you want.

January 11, 2007 3:07 PM
 

furmangg said:

January 11, 2007 6:45 PM
 

tlachev said:

Furmangg,

I've noticed your excelent feedback about SSRS and SSAS. I hope Microsoft has noticed it too. WRT 225128, you should be able to use any measure group that intersects with the selected dimensions.

January 12, 2007 2:55 PM
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