OLAP TOOLS

Alex Barfield
Jechand Chennupati
John O’Toole
Shantea Stanford
Marc Tardif
 Agenda
 OLAP Overview
 OLAP Concerns & ProClarity Background
 How ProClarity Works
 How to Use ProClarity
 Hands-on Exercise
 Decomposition Tree Demo
 Example Query
 Quiz!!!
 The FASMI Test
 Fast – System delivers responses to users within
roughly 5 seconds
 Analysis – System copes with relevant business
logic and statistical analysis, yet is simple enough
for target user
 Shared – System handles multiple updates in a
secure and timely manner
 Multidimensional – A conceptual view of the data
along several dimensions
 Information – All data and derived information
needed, capacity measured by how much input
data can be handled
 More OLAP Features
 Cubes - Typically, “cubes” of data are examined
along X, Y, and Z axes
 Dicing - Data “diced” in a range specified for each
dimension
 Drill-down/Roll-up - Data can be disaggregated
(drill-down) or aggregated (roll-up) along a
dimension
 Slicing - Data can be rotated to produce different
views or “slices” of a cube for analysis
 OLAP Applications
 Marketing/Sales Analysis – Consumer goods,
retailers, financial services

 Clickstream Analysis – e-commerce sites in

constant redesign based on analysis

 Financial Reporting/Consolidation – Accounts,

org. structure, time, actual/budget/forecast,
business line/product line = 5 or 6 dimensions
OLAP Market
 OLAP Market Niches
 Application OLAP – Complete applications or
toolkits from which complex applications can be
built, integration and high functionality,
complexity and high cost per user

 MOLAP – Unbundled, high performance

multidimensional or hybrid databases, multi-user
updating, applications handled are smaller than
ROLAP
 OLAP Market Niches
 DOLAP – Client-based OLAP products, easy to
deploy and low cost per seat, limited functionality
and capacity

 ROLAP – Data and metadata in a RDBMS, none

stored in external files, large data volumes,
complex and expensive, slow query performance,
smallest OLAP niche by far
 Pricing
 Hyperion’s Essbase - $25,000, includes 10
licenses

 Microsoft’s SQL Server - $5,000 (Standard

Edition) and $20,000 (Enterprise Edition)

 Cognos - ~$1,200 per seat

 ProClarity - $495 per seat + 20% maintenance fee

 OLAP Competitors
2000 1999 1998
Vendor Rank Share Rank Share Rank Share
Hyperion 1 22.3% 1 23.0% 1 28.7%
Cognos 2 12.6% 3 11.1% 3 9.6%
Microsoft 3 11.7% 5 7.6% - -
Oracle 4 10.1% 2 11.4% 2 17.0%
MicroStrategy 5 9.2% 4 7.9% 4 6.5%
 OLAP Competitors
2000 1999 1998
Vendor Rank Share Rank Share Rank Share
Bus. Objects 6 6.2% 6 5.3% 6 4.4%
Applix 7 3.0% 8 3.1% 10 2.5%
IBM 8 2.6% 9 3.0% 13 1.9%
Comshare 9 2.5% 7 3.2% 5 4.8%
PwC/Cartesis 10 2.3% 11 2.5% 12 2.1%
 OLAP Competitors
2000 1999 1998
Vendor Rank Share Rank Share Rank Share
SAS Institute 11 1.6% 12 2.2% 8 3.6%
Brio Tech. 12 1.5% 14 1.5% 15 1.1%
Seagate Soft. 13 1.4% 13 1.7% 7 2.9%
Adaytum 14 1.1% 17 1.0% 17 0.8%
CA 15 0.9% 10 2.8% 9 2.9%
 OLAP Concerns
 Company Politics - Much more troubling than
product issues

 “Environmental” – Failure to agree on (and stick

to the agreed) requirements

 Quality – Poor data quality and unavailable data

 OLAP Concerns
 Slow Query Performance – Most commonly
reported product-related problem

 Reliability – Relatively few sites report problems,

but the more expensive products had the most
reported problems

 Results – Higher priced products did not

necessarily achieve better results than lower-
priced options
 The Microsoft Effect
 Bundling – MS-OLAP bundled with its low-priced
SQL Server

 Cost – MS product is low cost yet scalable, builds

cubes quickly with good query response time

 Marketing – OLAP software should proliferate

due to Microsoft’s marketing network
 Increased OLAP Usage
 Commodity Position – MS-OLAP will likely
transition OLAP software into a commodity

 Choice – Many will choose MS-OLAP on price,

ease of use, and availability

 “New” users – These will represent the OLAP

move from specialist boutique to a mass market
 ProClarity
 Accessible – Founded in 1995 to make OLAP
accessible to broader business market

 Experienced – Consulting, traning, and market-

development staff (US & Europe)

 Legitimate – Over 250 corporate customers, 30

independent software vendor partners, and closely
linked with Microsoft
 ProClarity/MS Partnership
 Familiarity – ProClarity provides analysis tools in
the context of MS Office 2000, Outlook Digital
Dashboard, IE
 “Live” Reporting – With familiar MS &
ProClarity products, decision-makers can query
their data to do live reporting
 Corporate Goal – Give decision-makers a clear
understanding of the drivers of their organizations
performance