The OLAP Report

ProClarity 6.1
(ProClarity Corporation/Microsoft)

 

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Calculation Functionality

ProClarity takes advantage of Analysis Services’ ability to add calculations not defined in the cube. PAS provides a wizard which permits simple business calculations such as growth rates, time series aggregations, and simple relationships such as ratios and differences, to be defined without the user having any knowledge of MDX. Calculations can be defined using the professional clients, but not the thin client. Both clients can view the calculations.

It permits growth rates to be expressed in absolute or percentage terms and exploits OLE DB for OLAP’s time awareness (as long as the provider supports it correctly — Microsoft OLAP does, but some, such as iTM1, do not). This allows growth rates to be viewed as percentages or absolute amounts based on prior year or prior period (but not prior quarter) values. Time series calculations such as year-to-date, quarter-to-date or rolling ‘n’ periods can all be expressed.

Click on image to see the full-sized screen shot
This is an example of the use of the calculator wizard to define a rolling three period average calculation. In this case, the generated MDX is quite simple:
Avg( LASTPERIODS(3), [Measures].[Units Shipped] )

More complex custom calculations can be defined using the simplified or full MDX editor, or by using the Selector or KPI Designer described below. To use the MDX Editor the user needs a knowledge of MDX, which most business users (and many developers) are not likely to have. An example of this type of complex calculation is a period-on-period growth calculation which is very easy to define using the wizard, but the generated MDX code is rather more complex and less easy to edit:

( ([Time].CurrentMember, [Measures].[Store Invoice]) - ([Time].CurrentMember.Lag(1), [Measures].[Store Invoice]) ) / ([Time].CurrentMember.Lag(1), [Measures].[Store Invoice])


This is the full MDX expression editor, available (with no wizard) in dimensions other than measures.

ProClarity Business Logic Server

The ProClarity Selector was introduced with version 5.2 as a relatively expensive add-on product. With the release of version 5.3 ProClarity packaged Selector with another add-in called the KPI Designer. This new bundle is called the Business Logic Server. The Business Logic Server takes advantage of features of Analysis Services called named sets and calculated members, which are defined using MDX. ProClarity has provided a user-friendly way to tap the powerful features of Analysis Services that many generalist client tools ignore.

Selector sets and KPI Designer KPIs can be saved to the ProClarity Analytics Server as shared business logic. Using ProClarity Professional, users can publish business logic to the ProClarity Analytics Server and share them with other analysts and decision makers from a secure, centralized location. Thus, the Business Logic Server also functions as a collaboration tool. This ability to centralize the management of sets allows organizations to define ‘one version of the truth’ (one corporate definition of most at-risk customers, for example) and make this available to all users. Briefing books that use the shared logic are automatically updated when new versions of the logic are posted to the server – a very important function in order to maintain one version of the truth. This allows organizations to update their business definitions globally, without invalidating hundreds of existing reports and queries in the process.

 

THIS PAGE REPRESENTS ONLY A VERY SHORT EXTRACT FROM THE FULL REVIEW.

TO VIEW THE FULL REVIEW YOU CAN PURCHASE THE REVIEW INDIVIDUALLY OR PURCHASE AN ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION TO THE OLAP REPORT WHICH ALLOWS ACCESS TO ALL OLAP REPORT CONTENT.