Connect – a Simba Technologies Blog

Tableau connects to SAP BW powered by HANA using MDX query language

This past week, SAP and Tableau announced that you can use Tableau to visualize your SAP BW data.  This is great news and speaks to the openness of SAP BW.  Some people were curious how this works.  It is simple actually.  SAP BW has supported the MDX query language since it was launched in the late 1990's.  There are three ways to send an MDX query to SAP BW:

1. OLE DB for OLAP (ODBO)

2. XML for Analysis (XMLA)

3. OLAP BAPI

Whichever "transport" you use, you will hit the same MDX query processor on BW.  The MDX query language is the same standard used by SAP BW, Microsoft Analysis Services, Teradata OLAP, Oracle Database OLAP Option, Kognitio Pablo, etc.

So, it was easy to connect Tableau to SAP BW because Tableau issues MDX queries and SAP BW supports MDX queries.    Also note that Tableau will work with SAP BW on HANA and SAP BW that runs without HANA.  You can read more and see a demo here: Demo of Tableau running on SAP BW.

Of course, the next question is, Tableau now works on Microsoft Analysis Services and SAP BW.  When will Tableau officially support Teradata OLAP, Oracle Database OLAP Option, Kognitio Pablo, etc?

Is it that easy? "Seven Steps to Accounting Nirvana with HANA"

I was reading a blog post on SDN by Gregory Misiorek entitled "Seven Steps to Accounting Nirvana with HANA".  Gregory show how easy it is to pull ECC data into HANA in order to analyze using an Excel Pivot Table.  If you are considering HANA, this is worth a look.  Gregory's conclusions are:

"Conclusion or the main benefits of doing HANA reporting in Excel Pivot:

1. No need to create custom reports at any intermediate step listed above.
2. Use simple pivot tool which comes with each excel installation "for free".
3. Leverage column storage of HANA with ease of use of Excel to make millions of auditable records available to end user.
4. End users will never ask you to write another report after seeing this but it's up to you if this is a benefit to you and to your customers."

My interest in all of this of course is the underlying technology that makes this possible.  Excel communicates with a dimensional data source using the MDX query language.  If you are using Excel 2007 or Excel 2010, you need a data source that support the MDX 2005 query language.  Products like Essbase or Mondrian only support MDX 1999.  Products like SAP HANA, SAP BW, Microsoft Analysis Services, Teradata OLAP Connector, or Oracle Database OLAP support MDX 2005.  Since HANA supports the MDX 2005 query language as well as OLE DB for OLAP (ODBO), once the data is in HANA, it is just a matter of point and click.  In Gregory's article, steps 1-6 are about getting the data into HANA.  Step 7 is the point and click part of analyzing the data in HANA.

Yes, it is that easy!  I will be presenting a session on how to analyze your HANA data in Excel at the Administration and Infrastructure 2012 Conference which runs Feb 28 to Mar 2, 2012 in Las Vegas.  Come by and let me show you how easy it is to use Excel for your ad hoc data analysis and reporting!

Using Excel on SAP HANA... the inside scoop from SAP's Thomas Zurek

Thomas Zurek, VP for R&D of SAP BW and analytic parts of SAP HANA, just posted a blog about Using Excel on HANA.  This is important information on SAP HANA.  Basically, SAP HANA supports queries using the MDX language.  You can send MDX queries to HANA using the ODBO Provider.  HANA does not yet support XMLA, but it would be natural to expect this sometime soon.  Just like SAP BW has supported the MDX query language from day one, so does HANA.  What is key to note is that in his many presentations, SAP CTO Vishal Sikka has shown various applications connecting to HANA.  In all the hype about new applications on HANA, what has often been overlooked is that Excel can connect directly to HANA without requiring anything else.  What Thomas Zurek points out is that you can use your Excel Pivot Tables to directly analyze your data in HANA.  The power of this solution should not be overlooked when considering how easy it is to do these analytics.  From your Excel desktop, you get the full power of HANA to crunch your data.

OLAP sessions at Teradata Partners conference

I will be at the Teradata Partners User Conference next week in San Diego and wanted to point out a couple of session that are worth attending if you are interested in OLAP analysis on your Teradata data.

The first session is: Seamless Access from Excel PivotTables to Teradata by Sam Tawfik.  The abstract for Sam's session is:

"Teradata OLAP Connector makes it easy for Excel PivotTables to access Teradata. This tool makes it easy for Excel users to navigate the dimensional data stored in Teradata without having to extract subsets of the data.

Extracting data for analysis creates security challenges, inconsistent view of the data, and delay in access to current business data.

This session also includes an Excel to Teradata demo."

The second session is: Introduction to Teradata Business Intelligence Optimizer by Shannon Terry who is Director of Customer Analytics at Nationwide.  The abstract for Shannon's session is:

"This presentation will show the practical application of the Teradata Business Intelligence Optimizer (TBIO) suite of tools in addressing a common problem in organizations: spreadsheet proliferation. Spreadsheets are powerful tools, but they can become dangerous when data is taken out of the data warehouse and improperly handled or manipulated. The TBIO tool suite allows you to embrace the reality of spreadsheet-based BI in your organization while creating a safe and structured environment in which spreadsheet users can leverage value in your warehouse."

Sam's session looks to be a presentation about Teradata OLAP and how you can connect from Excel.  Shannon's presentation is a customer presentation on how they are using Teradata OLAP with Excel.

Also, if you are at Partner, make sure you visit the arcplan booth on the exhibit floor.  The folks from arcplan will be demonstrating how their product allows you to do analysis on your Teradata OLAP data.  Lots to see.

My adventures at SAP TechEd and Sybase TechWave

I was only briefly at SAP TechEd/Sybase TechWave this week.

The biggest thing for me was showing a demo of an MDX Provider for Sybase IQ.  We have worked jointly with Sybase to build this Proof of Concept and we got some good interest from Sybase partners and customers.  If you are interested in getting more information, please follow up with me or Andrew Neugebauer at Sybase.

Of course, the biggest thing at TechEd again was SAP HANA.  Vishal Sikka, SAP's CTO had a keynote where he unveiled two new applications for HANA - SAP Smart Meter Analytics and SAP COPA Accelerator.  You can read more here.  SAP HANA is very interesting because it "delivers single database with native support for row and columnar data stores; a data calculation engine; SQL and MDX interfaces and a unified information modeling design environment."

Starbucks uses Teradata TBIO for Product Affinity Analysis

One of the presentations at the 2011 Teradata PARTNERS User Group Conference & Expo this year is a session by Starbucks explaining how they do Product Affinitity Analysis.  To do this, Starbucks uses a Teradata 2650 Database Appliance, TBIO, Microsoft Excel pivot tables, and Aggregate Designer.  The OLAP cubes are built using the TBIO product with the Aggregate Designer being used to build AJIs to get good database query performance.  Microsoft Excel pivot tables then query the OLAP cubes using the MDX query language for seamless and direct integration.  If you are attending the Teradata Partners user conference, I strongly recommend this session to see what you can do with in-database analytics.  The nice part about this solution is you get OLAP performance on Teradata without having to actually build physical cubes or move any data.  All of the analytics happens inside of Teradata.  You also get the full power of Microsoft Excel without having to learn to use an Excel add-in so the training cost is significantly reduced and you can just focus on the work you need to do.  Details for the session are:

Title:		A Latte with TBIO – Starbucks’s Use of TBIO for Product Affinity Analysis
Length:		1 Hour
Abstract:		This session presents how Starbucks implemented Teradata’s Business Intelligence Optimizer (TBIO) to create a simple market basket analysis tool. Product Affinity & Market Basket analysis techniques are based on the popular reference Data Analysis Using SQL and Excel by Gordon S. Linoff (IBSN978-0-470-09951-3). This presentation illustrates the development of these techniques along with their associated metrics to a large-scale enterprise using a Teradata 2650 Database Appliance, TBIO, Microsoft Excel pivot tables, and Aggregate Designer.
Speaker:		Tim Carter Functional Analyst - Lead Starbucks Coffee Company
Co-presenter:		Paul Sheets Systems Planner/Designer Lead Starbucks Coffee Company

Latest on what Kognitio is doing

Kognitio launched the Pablo product last week and got a nice write up by Doug Henschen at Information week entitled: Kognitio Tries Fast, Faster, Fastest Data Warehouse Strategy.  Doug talked about Pablo and compared it so a similar product from Teradata called Teradata Business Intelligence Optimizer (TBIO).

My comment on Doug's article is that while the comment "Pablo's OLAP-style analysis is also not new. Teradata has offered a virtual OLAP-analysis option and a tie to Microsoft BI tools (including Excel) for several years" is true, Pablo is still a big differentiator with products like EMC GreenPlum, IBM Netezza, HP Vertica, and ParAccel. Teradata TBIO and Kognitio Pablo have what we call in-database OLAP where the OLAP cube meta data is defined and then the actual calculations and processing are done in the database so you get one version of the truth and you leverage the power of the analytics database. This approach well serves the Big Data space for analytics. Other players in this space don't have this approach. They try to bolt cubes on on top of the database and so they don't leverage the performance and processing power of the analytics database. Also, note that this solution integrates with Excel directly. This does not use an Excel add-in like Essbase does. Kognitio Pablo supports the MDX query language and the OLE DB for OLAP (ODBO) interface. What this means is you get the full power of Excel and Excel Pivot Tables directly against your data rather than having to pull your data into Excel and do aggregations and calculations there. While this might seem a subtle difference, it becomes obvious how big an advantage MDX is when you compare performance, scale and functionality. Also, if you every upgrade to a new version of Excel, Pablo will just work. You don't need to wait for the vendor to build an add-in for the new version of Excel. From a user point of view, this is big. So, Pablo is truly a differentiator for Kognitio.

Extreme OLAP on Big Data

Today, Kognitio announced the release of version 1 of Pablo.  Pablo is basically an OLAP engine for Big Data.  According to Roger LLewellyn (CEO of Kognitio), "virtual cubes can be built, populated and queried on the fly, with the minimum of time before data is ready to be examined. At the same time, by allowing users to take advantage of the familiar environment of Microsoft Excel, there is no need for extensive training before organizations can take advantage of this data. While Pablo does not immediately mean the end of physical cubes, the ability to virtualize large and complex cubes is an important leap in the evolution of OLAP."  You can read more at: Pablo - extreme OLAP and extreme analytics on Big Data.

In-database analytics by Kognitio

Kognitio has an interesting session lined up on July 6-7 at Canary Wharf in London that shows how you can do analytics in your data warehouse.  They will be demonstrating their Pablo product which allows you to build virtual cubes and do ad-hoc query and analytics on big data.  If you want more information, click here: OLAP style ad-hoc, exploratory analytics.

The future of Microsoft Analysis Services - for those of us who live in the MDX query language space this is an important read

A recent blog by TK Anand at Microsoft is a very important read for those of us who live in the MDX query language space.  TK is outlining the future of Microsoft Analysis Services, MDX, DAX, and the BISM (BI Semantic Model).  The MDX query language is the de-facto OLAP query language standard used by companies including Microsoft, Oracle, Teradata, SAP, and Kognitio.  Microsoft has been the leader of this standard and it is important to carefully watch the direction they are going in.  I strongly suggest you read this blog post: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/analysisservices/archive/2011/05/16/analysis-services-vision-amp-roadmap-update.aspx.  Of course, nothing happens overnight and there is an entire ecosystem around the MDX query language that will have to understand what Microsoft is doing and determine how they will move based on this.  It will also be very important to see how Excel (the most ubiquitous BI tool) responds to these changes in Analysis Services.

SAP BusinessObjects Analysis (formerly known as Pioneer)

At the SAP Sapphire conference this week, I spent some time looking at the SAP BusinessObjects Analysis product.  Analysis was previously code-named Pioneer.  This product replaces the BEx and Voyager products.  A very nice product if you want OLAP/dimensional analysis against your data.  There are two versions of Analysis - web and office.  The office version only works with SAP BW and is intended to replace BEx.  The web version works with both SAP BW and Microsoft Analysis Services.

A few points I did note:

1. The Office version seems very similar to Excel Pivot Tables which also works with SAP BW.  I tried to find out what the differences were with Analysis Office and was told that Analysis Office was more SAP'ish than Excel Pivot Tables.  I couldn't really ascertain much difference in functionality though.  Most people have Excel and if it works against SAP BW (at no extra cost), not sure why you would pay to use Analysis Office.

2. The Web version seems very similar to Pivot Tables in Excel Services.  Ok, if you want Excel Services, then you need to also install SharePoint so this could definitely be a reason to go with Analysis Web.  Analysis Web does work with both SAP BW and Microsoft Analysis Services so that is a good thing.  However, it would be great if SAP would extend this to other OLAP/dimensional sources like Oracle OLAP or Teradata Business Intelligence Optimizer.

3. We currently have Voyager (the predecessor product to Analysis Web) working with Oracle OLAP and have had a fair bit of interest for this.  The challenge has been that most customers want SAP to officially support this which they have not yet done.  Note to any SAP people reading this - we have actual SAP customers who have licensed Voyager and really want to have Voyager officially support Oracle OLAP.

Any other comments on SAP Business Objects (SBO) Analysis would be most welcome.

The benefits of Excel for IT departments

I was reading a blog post from Bill Baker from May last year entitled "I.T. Can Run But I.T.Can’t Hide (from Microsoft Excel)" which had some good points.  Bill talks about how "counter to the conventional wisdom, IT benefits from users serving their own needs with Excel or other tools. In a world of do-more-with less and hyper-competitiveness among companies, IT is pained by being the bottleneck that holds back the creativity and innovation of employees."  I think this is a very important point.  If IT can set users up with the ability to serve themselves using something as simple and pervasive as Excel, IT can become the heroes in the enterprise.  The MDX query language interface to an OLAP cube allows Excel to connect and gives "end-users access to quality data and a tool they enjoy using" for analytics.  At Simba, we have helped companies like Oracle, SAP, and Teradata build this capability into their products.  If you want more information about how to build Excel and MDX query language connectivity for your OLAP cubes, check out: http://www.simba.com/olap-sdk.htm or http://www.simba.com/MDX-Provider-for-Oracle-OLAP.htm.

Inside information about how to connect to SAP BW from Thomas Zurek

Since Simba has been key in the OLE DB for OLAP (ODBO) and MDX query language connectivity to SAP BW and SAP HANA, I get a lot of people coming to me and asking about SAP BW connectivity.  Recently, there was an online thread I was involved in about connectivity to SAP BW.  Thomas Zurek, the VP for R&D of BW, got involved in the thread and I asked him to post his comments on his own blog.  Being the nice guy that he is, Thomas obliged.  Here is a link to what Thomas wrote: http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/weblogs?blog=/pub/wlg/23784.  If you do anything with SAP BW, I strongly recommend you read what Thomas has written.  After all, he does have the ultimate inside track!

Teradata OLAP Connector - MDX queries and analytics in the database

This month's Teradata magazine has a very interesting article by Matt Zenus explaining how the Teradata OLAP connector works.  Basically, this gives you the ability to do OLAP style analytics right in your Teradata database and access the results using the MDX query language.  You can read Matt's article here: http://www.teradatamagazine.com/v11n01/Tech2Tech/Direct-Access/.

Also, in case you didn't see this, Teradata posted some pretty good numbers for Q4 and the year as a whole: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/10/teradata_q4_2010_numbers/.

More about Kognitio Pablo

Here is the official press release about Kognitio's Pablo product: http://www.kognitio.com/next-big-thing-in-data-analytics-no-more-physical-cubes.

There is also a good whitepaper by Dr. Mark Whitehorn: http://www.kognitio.com/downloads/pablo_white_paper.pdf. Dr. Whitehorn is the author of "Fast Track to MDX" which was co-authored with Robert Zare and Mosha Pasumansky of Microsoft.  Mosha was one of the originators of the MDX query language.

In the whitepaper, Dr Whitehorn says that "With Pablo, Kognitio has introduced a game-changing environment that enables business users to analyze all of their information from their platform of choice without the need for costly and time-consuming transformations and builds. Fast, simple and available 24/7."  This is quite powerful as Pablo uses the MDX query language to give users direct access from Excel and other BI tools to their data for train of thought type analysis.

 

 

Kognitio Pablo - OLAP without an actual cube - MDX query language access from Excel Pivot Tables

I was at the Gartner BI Summit in London last week and Kognitio had a session on their new Pablo product.  Basically, Pablo allows you to define meta data such that your data in WX2 is presented to Microsoft Excel Pivot Tables as a cube.  So, you really have a ROLAP implementation on WX2.  These ROLAP models are accessed using OLE DB for OLAP and the MDX query language.  There is a session by Robin Bloor of the Bloor Group and John Coppins of Kognitio where they will present this solution and answer questions.  If you are interested in the data warehouse space and how you can build ROLAP models, I strongly suggest you watch this webinar.  You can register here: https://bloorgroup.webex.com/mw0306lc/mywebex/default.do;jsessionid=KGQNNJDNqyPqp0CQxnkybs8NnTQ4ypxf1pHTpZ9v0sg6ns19PDJ3!1821339609?nomenu=true&siteurl=bloorgroup&service=6&main_url=https%3A%2F%2Fbloorgroup.webex.com%2Fec0605lc%2Feventcenter%2Fevent%2FeventAction.do%3FtheAction%3Ddetail%26confViewID%3D279381906%26siteurl%3Dbloorgroup%26%26%26.  The details of the session are:

"The Briefing Room with Robin Bloor and Kognitio

Several new approaches challenge the long-standing process of delivering BI solutions via OLAP on top of Data Warehouses. The most recently unveiled model focuses on delivering 'train-of-thought' analytics to business users in their favorite environment: Microsoft Excel. Under the covers, an in-memory database combines with Massive Parallel Processing (MPP) to achieve a huge reduction in latency, inaccuracy and scalability issues.

Register for this episode of Briefing Room to learn from veteran Analyst Robin Bloor, who will explain how and why the architecture of information management is changing, in part due to the cloud. He'll then offer insights on what you can do to become more agile and responsive. Bloor will be briefed by John Coppins of Kognitio, who will tout his company’s latest offering Pablo, which creates a virtual marshaling area for metadata and super-charged “cubes” which essentially circumvent many of the issues that companies encounter with cube maintenance and proliferation.
Each episode of The Briefing Room includes a 5-min topical intro by the Host, Eric Kavanagh, a 15-min detailed technical presentation by a vendor, a brief response by a well-known analyst, then a live, unscripted analyst briefing. The show finishes with a 15-min Q&A with the audience and anyone who tweets questions with a hash tag of #briefr."

‘tis the season for predictions…

On news feeds and podcasts over the last few weeks, there have been lots of predictions of what 2011 has in store for us.  Sprinkled subtly among the hot themes (more mobile, more social, more collaborative), I noticed something interesting in the background—there was a lot of talk about data.  How to handle the ever-increasing growth of data.  How to make data more open and accessible.  How to make sense of increasingly interconnected data.

Whether we’re talking about the latest apps for a smartphone, the latest network that links people together, or the latest technology that helps people work together, at the core there is always the data that is either generated by it or needed by it.  20 years ago, we might have been talking about the latest desktop database technology and how we were going to analyze the data from it and combine that with data from a mainframe system.  It’s still the same problem—we’ve got some large sets of data from different sources and we want to slice & dice that data in a way that makes sense to us.

It’s telling that 20 years ago, the first ODBC driver allowed Excel users to pull in data from diverse sources like dBase and ISAM and produce their own custom reports & charts—and we’re still using the same tools to answer tough business questions today.  The range of data connectivity tools has expanded to include ODBC, JDBC, OLEDB, ADO.NET, OLAP, ODBO, XMLA, MDX and more, but the fundamentals haven’t changed.  My (admittedly rather safe) prediction for 2011 is that the need for connectivity to diverse data sources will continue to grow (and keep growing well into the future).   If there is some unusual or custom data source that you would like to connect your applications to, or pull into your servers from, please drop us a line as it may be simpler than you think.

On news feeds and podcasts over the last few weeks, there have been lots of predictions of what 2011 has in store for us.  Sprinkled subtly among the hot themes (more mobile, more social, more collaborative), I noticed something interesting in the background—there was a lot of talk about data.  How to handle the ever-increasing growth of data.  How to make data more open and accessible.  How to make sense of increasingly interconnected data.

Whether we’re talking about the latest apps for a smartphone, the latest network that links people together, or the latest technology that helps people work together, at the core there is always the data that is either generated by it or needed by it.  20 years ago, we might have been talking about the latest desktop database technology and how we were going to analyze the data from it and combine that with data from a mainframe system.  It’s still the same problem—we’ve got some large sets of data from different sources and we want to slice & dice that data in a way that makes sense to us.

It’s telling that 20 years ago, the first ODBC driver allowed Excel users to pull in data from diverse sources like dBase and ISAM and produce their own custom reports & charts, and we’re still using the same tools to answer tough business questions today.  The range of data connectivity tools has expanded to include ODBC, JDBC, OLEDB, ADO.NET, OLAP, ODBO, XMLA, MDX and more, but the fundamentals haven’t changed.  My (admittedly rather safe) prediction for 2011 is that the need for connectivity to diverse data sources will continue to grow (and keep growing well into the future).   If there is some unusual or custom data source that you would like to connect your applications to, or pull into your servers from, please drop us a line as it may be simpler than you think.

SAP HANA now available - supports MDX and SQL

SAP just announced that their High performance ANalytical Appliance (HANA) is now available.  HANA supports both the SQL and MDX query languages.  SQL is supported via ODBC.  I am not sure if they also support JDBC, but if not, it would make sense this would come very soon.  MDX is supported via ODBO.  XMLA is not supported yet but most BI applications and especially Excel are more ODBO-centric so this is fine.  Since Excel only works with ODBO providers, I would much rather have ODBO than XMLA.

Some comments about HANA from Jake Klein (VP Product Management at SAP): http://sapteched.news-sap.com/2010/12/01/still-wondering-what-are-in-memory-and-sap-hana/.

The future of Microsoft Analysis Services and the MDX query language

Last week was a very interesting week at the PASS conference in Seattle.  Microsoft made a lot of announcements about "Denali", the next version of SQL Server.  For myself, the most interesting announcements were that the Vertipaq technology that Microsoft has developed would be embedded into SQL Server itself and that Microsoft Analysis Services would be extended with a new BI Semantic Model (BISM).  Two people that I respect greatly, T.K. Anand and Chris Webb have both written extensively about these topics in their blogs.

T.K. comments: "There will always be sophisticated BI applications that need the power of MDX calculations and we envision that the BI Semantic Model will offer the choice of MDX as well, but this will likely come in a release after Denali."

Chris comments: "BISM models will also be able to operate in ‘passthrough’ mode. This is essentially ROLAP done right, and a lot of work has gone on around this; in Denali it will only be available for SQL Server and only if you’re issuing DAX queries, not MDX. In the future other RDBMSs will be supported, plus possibly MDX querying of BISM when it’s in passthrough mode. Essentially in this scenario when you query the model your query is translated direct to SQL, and the results returned are (as far as possible) passed back to you directly with the minimum of interference. In some cases, for example where there are calculations, BISM will do some stuff with the resultset before it hands it over to you, but the aim is to push as much of the logic into the SQL query that it generates. If it works well, it sounds like at long last we’ll have a serious ‘realtime’ BI option, though I’m still not sure how well it will perform; I suppose if there are Vertipaq indexes inside SQL Server and/or if you’re using PDW, the performance should be good."

There was a lot of confusion last week and to fully understand the directions on Analysis Services and the MDX query language, I very strongly recommend you read the following:

1. Analysis Services – Roadmap for SQL Server “Denali” and Beyond: http://blogs.technet.com/b/dataplatforminsider/archive/2010/11/12/analysis-services-roadmap-for-sql-server-denali-and-beyond.aspx

2. PASS Summit 2010 Day 1: http://cwebbbi.wordpress.com/2010/11/10/pass-summit-2010-day-1/

3. PASS Summit Day 2: http://cwebbbi.wordpress.com/2010/11/11/pass-summit-day-2/

4. PASS Summit Day 2: The Aftermath: http://cwebbbi.wordpress.com/2010/11/14/pass-summit-day-2-the-aftermath/

After you read all of this and digest it, I would love to hear any comments you have.  Also, keep in mind that Microsoft just released the first CTP of SQL Server "Denali" and none of the Analysis Services features are in this CTP.  Therefore, we need to wait for the next CTP to start playing with any of this and my expectation is that "Denali" will not likely be available until mid to late 2011.

Teradata Business Intelligence Optimizer

Matt Zenus and Carlos Bouloy presented on the Teradata Business Intelligence Optimizer (TBIO) last week at the Teradata Partners conference in San Diego.  TBIO allows you to build ROLAP cubes on your Teradata database and query these from Microsoft Excel Pivot Tables using the MDX query language.  TBIO also allows you to define AJIs so that the performance of your MDX queries is extremely fast.  If you were unable to attend but would like a copy of the slides, please email me.  On the last slide, Matt and Carlos had a number of links which are worth following if you are interested in using OLAP on your Teradata database:

• "Teradata Aggregate Designer Optimizes Performance of Analytic Applications for Smarter Business Decisions" –Press Release 

http://www.teradata.com/t/newsrelease.aspx?id=14780

• "An Automated Approach" –Teradata Magazine

http://teradatamagazine.com/v10n02/Tech2Tech/An-automated-approach/

 

• "Teradata Aggregate Designer"–White Paper

http://www.teradata.com/t/white-papers/Teradata-Aggregate-Designer-eb6110/?type=WP

 

• "The ROLAP Easy Button –An Introduction to the Teradata Aggregate Designer" –Developer Exchange Article

http://developer.teradata.com/tools/articles/the-rolap-easy-button-an-introduction-to-the-teradata-aggregate-designer-tool

 

• "Teradata OLAP Connector"–Data Sheet

http://www.teradata.com/t/brochures/Teradata-OLAP-Connector-eb6212/?type=BR

• "OLAP and TBIO"–YouTube Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o-qVYRxwM0

 

 

Teradata Business Intelligence Optimizer demoed at Teradata Partners Conference

I am at the Teradata Partners conference this week in San Diego and they are demoing the Teradata Business Intelligence Optimizer (TBIO) on the show floor.  As I previously wrote (http://blogs.simba.com/simba_technologies_ceo_co/2010/09/tbio-rolap-on-teradata-smarter-faster-easier.html), TBIO has 3 components:

1. Teradata Schema Workbench

2. Teradata Aggregate Designer

3. Teradata OLAP Connector

Matt Zenus, a Product Manager at Teradata, will present tomorrow (October 28) on "The ROLAP Easy Button" at 11:30 Pacific.  Matt will show the Teradata OLAP Connector "which allows seamless connectivity from OLAP/MDX clients directly to Teradata in a pure relational online analytical processing (ROLAP) environment".  If you are at the conference, this session is a must attend as it shows one of the new in-database analytics solutions from Teradata.

With TBIO, you basically remove the need for a mid-tier OLAP server against Teradata.  Rather, all of the OLAP analytics are done within the Teradata database and so you get the scale and performance of Teradata for ROLAP.  What is even better about this solution is that it uses the industry standard MDX query language to access the ROLAP cubes so all packaged BI apps like Microsoft Excel work seamlessly.

Pivot Tables / OLAP are essential for Business Intelligence

According to CIO.com, "Pivot tables are perhaps one of the most popular methods for analyzing data and business trends" and pivot tables / OLAP analysis are 1 of the 5 essential elements every BI solution should include: http://advice.cio.com/mrc/13181/5_essential_elements_every_business_intelligence_solution_should_include  To support Excel Pivot Tables, a data source must support ODBO (OLE DB for OLAP) and the MDX query language.  All of the major data source support this including Microsoft Analysis Services, Oracle OLAP, SAP BW, and Teradata BIO (Business Intelligence Optimizer).  Adding MDX query language support for any analytical data source is not an easy thing to do.  Not only do you have to follow the published specifications - http://www.xmla.org/xmla1.1.doc and http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms717005(v=VS.85).aspx, but you also need to follow the unpublished changes since the specs were last updated like understanding MDX 2005 and you also need to understand how MDX compliant apps like Excel Pivot Tables will connect to your OLAP data source.  This is not a trivial task - sometimes likened to building an RDBMS from scratch.  There is an easier way.  Dave Parsons, formely SVP Product Development of ALG Software (acquired by Business Objects which was then acquired by SAP) talks about how he and his team went about enabling Excel Pivot Tables connectivity for their Activity Based Costing product: http://www.simba.com/case-study-ALG-Software-MDX-Engine-ODBO-Interface.htm.

Oracle Exadata pipeline exceeds 1.5 billion dollars!

Oracle announced their fiscal Q1 and according to Larry Ellison, their Exadata pipeline has grown significantly.  According to the press release “Our Exadata database machine continued to win new customers in Q1,” said Oracle CEO, Larry Ellison. “The worldwide Exadata pipeline now exceeds $1.5 billion for the full fiscal year.”  This is quite impressive.

If you would like to see how the Simba MDX Provider for Oracle OLAP can assist your Exadata implementation by allowing Excel Pivot Tables ad-hoc query and analysis on your Oracle OLAP cubes, please visit us at OpenWorld in Moscone West at Oracle pod W-18 "Using Oracle OLAP Cubes with Excel and BI Applications".  The MDX query language is a standard originally developed by Microsoft in the mid 90's to allow standard query language support for OLAP cubes.  This standard has been adopted by leading players in data analytics including IBM, Oracle, SAP, and Teradata.

MDX provider for Oracle OLAP at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco

If you are interested in connecting your Excel Pivot Tables to Oracle database OLAP Option and being able to do ad-hoc query and analysis on your Oracle data, you definitely want to attend the session "Enhancing BI Applications, Oracle Database, and Oracle Exadata with Analytics" by Bud Endress and Marty Gubar.  The description of this session is "In this hands-on lab, you will learn how to enhance your business intelligence applications and the Oracle data warehouse with advanced analytic content by using Oracle OLAP cubes. With the Oracle Analytic Workspace Manager tool, you will design an Oracle cube, enhance the cube with rich calculations, and learn how the cube is queried with SQL. Oracle OLAP cubes are multidimensional datatypes within Oracle Database that can be used to enhance the analytic content and performance of BI applications and the Oracle data warehouse. Oracle cubes can be queried by BI applications such as Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition with SQL or by tools such as Microsoft Excel with MDX."

Bud also has another session "Enhancing Oracle Data Warehouses with Rich Analytics for Business Intelligence".  The description of this session is "Learn how to embed an analytically rich business model within Oracle Database that makes the Oracle Exadata and SQL-based business intelligence tools such as Oracle Business Intelligence applications smarter, turns Oracle Application Express into a BI tool, and supports dimensional BI tools such as Microsoft Excel and SAP's BusinessObjects Voyager. This demo-based session introduces you to Oracle OLAP and Oracle's multidimensional business model, how to enhance the model with dimensionally and hierarchically aware calculations, and how to query the business model with both SQL and Multidimensional Expressions (MDX). The session examines the business model from the perspective of both the business user and the DBA/application developer."

If you can't make either session for whatever reason or you want to know more, I suggest you drop by the Oracle data warehousing pod where we will be demonstrating how to use Excel to do ad-hoc query and analysis of your Oracle cubes using the Simba MDX Provider for Oracle OLAP.

Also, Simba will be hosting a cocktail party at OpenWorld on Tuesday from 5 to 7.  This is a by-invitation event so if you would like to attend, give me a shout and I can send you an official invite.

Teradata's product strategy

Simba does a lot of work with Teradata, having recently partnered with Teradata on the Teradata Business Intelligence Optimizer where we helped Teradata bring a ROLAP/MDX Query Labguage solution to market: http://www.simba.com/docs/Teradata-Case-Study.pdf.  This was a very exciting project because building an MDX provider for Teradata was quite different than building one for SAP BW or Oracle OLAP.  In the Teradata case, there was no existing cube infrastructure to build upon so we had to do a lot of work building infrastructure.  So, this time, we not only had to build the capability of the MDX provider to talk SQL to the database, we also had to build the infrastructure to define a cube based on relational tables in the database.

I was reading a blog post by Curt Monash entitled "Teradata's Future Product Strategy": http://intelligent-enterprise.informationweek.com/blog/archives/2010/08/teradatas_futur.html.  In his blog, Curt comments on conversations he had with Scott Gnau and Carson Schmidt from Teradata.  Curt talks about Teradata's partnering strategy to bring new products to market; the work that Teradata and Simba did on the Teradata Business Intelligence Optimizer is another example of this.  We have built an innovative solution that advances on products both Teradata and Simba previously had.