BI tools from MS?

sorry for the basic questoin yet again but I'm new to this...

Could you please tell me what are the end user BI tools from MS that could be used to browse SSAS cube? That understand metadata etc?

Like the browser that is build in the SQL Management studio is great - I though that OWC control would provide similar inteface but instead it looks just like Pivot Table - it doesn't seem to understand metadata & so doesn't apply proper formatting to mesures, nor allows to browse the cube the way I want (group measures, dimension members etc)

Thanks!

Excel 2007 have full support for all features in SSAS2005.

ProClarity Analytics 6.3 (Current relase is 6.2) includes a windows client(Professional), a web client(Analytics Server) and a Dashboard. Microsoft bought ProClarity last year in may.

This year MS will release a new product for financial planning, Dashboard/Balance Scorecard and Analytics called Performance point. It is planned to be released the second half of this year.

HTH

Thomas Ivarsson

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cool - thanks for your help. unfortunately these tools aren't readily available...

so just the last question (and also to clarify my original question) - SQL Server Management studio does use OWC 1.1 for the cube browser, but it also uses WindowsForms10.SysTreeView32 control for the browser on the left hand side that does display metadata, groups properly etc.

Is it just a regular tree view control & MS has written custom logic to populate it based on the cube's metadata or that countrol could be somehow exposed & reused easily?

how do I even read that info from SSAS cube?

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Hello. I am not a .Net specialist so my answere is very general.

I think that you use the new object model AMO to retrieve meta data information from SSAS2005. If you install the samples that is an optional part of the SQL Server 2005 installation you will get different code samples and projects.

Books On Line also have information for developers. There is a new CTP 3 SP2 version at www.microsoft.com/sql

Excel 2003 also support SSAS2005 but you will have to install OLEDB for OLAP version 9. You can download it with an add-in for Excel 2003 here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=DAE82128-9F21-475D-88A4-4B6E6C069FF0&displaylang=en

Edit: This add-in will show the SSAS2005 metadata.

Kind regards

Thomas Ivarsson

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unfortunately these tools aren't readily available

Excel 2007 is available for couple of months already...

|||Great info - thanks!