Re the wiki comment -- I changed the Multidimensional page way back when to include multivalued IIRC, the someone removed the multidimensional page pointing it to OLAP. The stub of a MultiValue page I started (please anyone jump in, we are all busy and I just stubbed it in a while back) pointed to the Multidimensional page.
I have not worked directly with Essbase, but basically it is used for data marts/warehouses using "cubes" which in the simplest explanation are not unlike MV files with multi-part keys and virtual fields for everything you want to "see" from that file. If your company has already invested in it, it would not be the worst thing in the world to extract, transform, and load data into Essbase, and it could give you even fantastic, wonderful results for meeting some business needs. It is non-trivial to do such a project, however, so it might be more cost than it is worth. It depends, of course, on the business requirements (a lot of help that advice was, eh?). I'm teaching a course in decision support systems right now (in fact better get a move on), so I have plenty of opinions and even a few facts ;-), but the main one is that every such project has a cost, with the cost of determining the actual requirements being one of the big ones and the cost of supporting a big data warehousing environment being typically larger than people estimate up front. Best wishes. --dawn On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 7:15 PM, Tony Gravagno <[email protected]>wrote: > > > From: Brian F. Paige > > > 1. Does Essbase integrate with U2? > > As I've mentioned in my blog and in forums, U2 can connect to > anything - don't let anyone convince you otherwise. One of the > biggest things holding the MV market back is that even people who > use and love the platform have an overwhelming tendency to wonder > whether the system can actually do things that are advertised > elsewhere. Sure it can! > > The primary concern for integrating U2 to anything else is how > fast you need transaction data reflected in the new environment. > That determines whether an interface will be online, offline, or > near-line, and that narrows down your selection of tools to be > used for integration. > > For anyone who's curious, here's info on Essbase: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essbase > Side note: What's more interesting to me is how this is defined > emphatically as "a multidimensional database management system > (MDBMS)", and this page > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multidimensional_database > simply redirects to Online Analytical Processing unless you stop > it from doing so. (MV Marketing people should get some clues > here... the rest of the world equates MultiDimensional to OLAP > while most people in our market don't use the term OLAP in > relation to their MV/MD DBMS.) > > Anyway ... what I get from wikipedia is that Essbase really is > nothing more than a database, novel to relational folks but > nothing unusual to us. So Essbase Analytics is a pretty GUI on > top of a system just like what you have now, just marketed as > something special. (Perhaps MV Marketing people will find > another clue there.) The important thing is not Essbase itself, > but what the pretty GUI provides. And that leads us to an > evaluation of functionality... > > > > 2. What other packages are out there that would be comparable? > > What I recommend is that you define specific goals for reporting > and then decide if you need extended reporting tools or if you > need Business Intelligence. For MV-centric tools you'll find > products like MITS from MITS, Informer from Entrinsik, Velocity > from Tantiva, DeepSee from InterSystems, and Viságe from Stamina. > Some of these are for BI and others reporting... > > In addition to the more common mainstream offerings, many people > like Jasper Reports, but (arguably) that's not BI. I have been > very impressed by ClickView and some of our colleagues are > integrating MV with it. I'd welcome an opportunity to do so as > well. You may also get what you need using off-the shelf > development tools like Telerik Reporting (for less than 1k plus > development time compared to 50-100k just to start working with > some of the others). > > You'll find many discussions on reporting and BI in the archive > for this forum, and in comp.databases.pick. Here is a link to > one such thread: > http://tinyurl.com/ydx52rd > Google using query: > group:comp.databases.pick > and terms like mits, entrinsik, reporting, etc. Example: > group:comp.databases.pick mits > group:comp.databases.pick reporting > > HTH > > BTW, I used to contract for Serta Corporate back in the early > 90's when they were running on Microdata. Fond memories... > > Tony Gravagno > Nebula Research and Development > TG@ remove.pleaseNebula-RnD.com > Nebula R&D provides Pick/MultiValue products > worldwide, and provides related development services > remove.pleaseNebula-RnD.com/blog > Visit PickWiki.com! Contribute! > http://Twitter.com/TonyGravagno > > > _______________________________________________ > U2-Users mailing list > [email protected] > http://listserver.u2ug.org/mailman/listinfo/u2-users > -- Dawn M. Wolthuis Take and give some delight today _______________________________________________ U2-Users mailing list [email protected] http://listserver.u2ug.org/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
