The SAS MDDB Report Viewer provides extensive OLAP capabilities,
presenting multiple dimensions simultaneously while allowing
users to drill down through dimensions. The SAS MDDB viewer
provides drill-down capabilities and clickable 3-D graphs. SAS
MDDB cubes are created using the SAS MDDB Server (version 8)
or SAS OLAP Server (version 9). SAS provides a simple procedure
for creating OLAP cubes and off-the-shelf tools to access them
through the Internet or intranet.
Try our hands-on
demo of the SAS MDDB Report Viewer.
2. SAS Xplore. SAS Xplore does not require
SAS MDDB server or SAS OLAP Server. It displays the results
of SAS summary procedures, providing more limited OLAP capabilities
than the SAS MDDB viewer. It presents only one dimension at
a time and cannot display multiple dimensions on the screen,
but facilitates drill-down.
3. Microsoft Pivot Table Service (part of the Office
Web Components). PTS is a desktop component that allows
Microsoft Analysis Services cubes to be viewed in the browser.
Sever-side processing for a web request through PTS is much
quicker when accessing a ready-made Microsoft Analysis Services
OLAP cube than when accessing a SQL Server table.
Try our hands-on
demo of OLAP using Microsoft Pivot Table Services.
4. Microsoft Excel pivot tables. These contain
many of the analytical capabilities of MDDB cubes. They can
use transactional data, such as SAS datasets or Microsoft SQL
Server tables, Microsoft Analysis Services OLAP cubes, or Excel
itself.
SAS/Microsoft OLAP Integration. Excel pivot tables
can access SAS OLAP cubes created using the newest release of
SAS (9.1) and the new SAS Buisness Intelligence module. Alternatively,
a SAS program can create an Excel pivot table by opening Excel
and executing the necessary VBA macro statements.
Power to the end-users. Intuitive and powerful
viewers enable decision makers at all levels of expertise to
analyze business scenarios from all possible perspectives. We
use a full range of multidimensional data modeling techniques,
including drill-down and drill-across views, providing a decision
support system for end-users to perform data warehouse data
mining.
Thick
and thin (clients). SAS MDDB Report Viewer, SAS Xplore,
and Microsoft Pivot Table Service are thin clients. Microsoft
Excel is not.
Web access: How much data do you download?
The SAS MDDB Viewer and SAS Xplore send the user's request -
a specific combination of class variables and measures - to
the database, and transaction data is returned to the browser.
Processing is server-side, so data transfer is limited to results.
The same is true for the Microsoft Pivot Table Services, or
Microsoft Excel using remote data, e.g., a remote SAS OLAP cube,
a remote SQL Server database, or a remote Microsoft Analysis
Services OLAP cube. But an Excel pivot table using data stored
in its own worksheets can be a heavy download when created on
a server and accessed by clicking a web link, but after the
download all analytical processing can take place right on the
desktop.
