In this two-part article, we will return briefly to our exploration of what has continued to be a popular topic (and which, as I mentioned in Article Ten, results several e-mails each week in my inbox), Reporting Options for Analysis Services Cubes. As I stated before, our focus is to explore options beyond the Analysis Manager / Sample Application interfaces for obtaining reports from, or browsing MSAS cubes within a range of similar business intelligence capabilities. My intent continues to be, therefore, to review the process of establishing connectivity and enabling reporting capabilities for each of the options, coupled with a high-level overview of the functionality that is available. It is beyond the scope of the articles to compare the product features themselves, to any significant extent. As I stated from the outset of the Reporting Options articles, I will consider providing a similar examination of other analysis and reporting applications, as time and circumstances permit, based upon useful suggestions I receive from readers. (This article is itself the result of such a suggestion.)

After a brief introduction to the application, together with an overview of the process of connecting it to an MSAS cube, we will examine some of the options offered by ProClarity for report building. As we did with the MS Office and Cognos reporting options in the previous Reporting Options articles, we will present an introduction to using ProClarity to retrieve and display information from our cubes, after exposing the steps required for establishment of a connection to the cube. Next, we will briefly examine the layout and navigation of the reporting interface that ProClarity offers, and examine illustrations of browsing and reporting our cube data from within the application.
 

The topics within this article will include:

• The establishment of connectivity and other preparatory steps to enable analysis and reporting via the ProClarity application;
• An introduction to several features and options that are available within ProClarity for browsing MSAS cubes, and creating components of robust and flexible reports;
• The basics of use and navigation of the ProClarity interface in analyzing and reporting from MSAS cubes.

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About the Series:

This article is a member of the series Introduction to MSSQL Server 2000 Analysis Services. The series is designed to provide hands-on application of the fundamentals of MS SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services, with each installment progressively adding features and techniques designed to meet specific real - world needs. For more information on the series, as well as the hardware / software requirements to prepare for the exercises we will undertake, please see my initial article, Creating Our First Cube.
ProClarity, Professional, MSAS, MSSQL , Server, Analysis Services,, Cube, MDX, Properties, OLAP, Report, Reporting, Formula, Condition, Calculation
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