|
|
|
|
|
|
The “Companion for MS Analysis Server” product targets several types of users;
a) Administrators – Reports can help with capacity planning such as: what will be the size of the Cubes in several months, how much time does it take to backup/restore the databases, how much time does it take to process the cubes, is it going to take longer for the processing to complete in the near future, what are the slowest steps during the processing, etc. The server is also baselined so bottlenecks and performance trends can be observed and tracked.
b) Developers – Reports can provide detailed information about the metadata on the server including dimensions, partitions and aggregations. Data access patters are also collected and reported on so developers can focus on missing aggregations.
c) Consultants – Bottleneck can be easily isolated. The software reports both on the slowest MDX / DMX / XMLA queries as well as SQL queries used during cube processing.
d) BI workers - OLAP-on-OLAP can be done with end-user usage reports. BI workers can monitor and study in what end users are interested.
The software also has some advance features such as: Cache Warmer - can pre-populate the cache so the end-users, such as executives, don’t have to not waiting for the data to be fetched into memory after cube processing; User Aggregations – this feature takes aggregations to the next level by creating aggregations which cover multiple dimensions/attributes; Hardware – displays details information about the server hardware such as what type and maximum size of memory sticks the motherboard takes and which slots are empty, CPU socket type, bus frequency, etc.; Software – monitor who is connecting and what is being requested; locks, transactions, traces, memory usage, and more.
The software run natively on x86, x64 and IA64 platforms. It consists of two pieces which can be installed on different platforms: a) a NT service, which is installed on the Analysis server and collects data; the service is fully configurable and the impact on the server is less than 1%; and b) MMC 3.0 Snap-In which display the collected data. The user-interface is completely asynchronous so multiple tasks can be submitted concurrently without the need to wait for their completion. The installation of the software does not require server restart.
We do also offer BI Companion. The product is free as long as it is launched from our web location http://x32.sqlminds.com/bicompanion The product allows you to browse multi-dimensional data, put your own ad-hoc reports with only using the mouse and perform advance analytics. The software is Javascript based and runs from your machine. You can re-point the software to your own HTML configured SSAS server (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2005/httpasws.mspx) and it will use your NT Identity for accessing the SSAS data. You may also need to make changes to IE to allow a) add http://*.sqlminds.com to your “trusted web sites”, b) Internet Options->Security->Internet Zone-> Custom Level->Miscellaneous->Access Data Sources across domains->Enable and c) enable some of the Javascript related features in the browser. The product demonstrates the browsing of cube data over the internet in a drag-and-drop fashion, ad-hoc reporting, XMLA and Web services, asynchronous requests, most of the SSAS features such as: hierarchies, levels, measures, KPIs, Datasets, Properties, filters, charting, drillthru, actions, reporting, MDX, saving and restoring reports, and more… The tool runs using SQL 2005 and 2008. Here are a couple of alternative location for x64 SQL 2005 (http://x64.sqlminds.com/bicompanion) and IA64 SQL 2008 (http://x64.sqlminds.com/bicompanion).
Data Mining (DM) Companion is a supplemental tool. The product is free as long as it is launched from our web location http://x32.sqlminds.com/dmcompanion This software allows you to perform data mining related operations from your browsers. It uses HTTP configured SSAS server for accessing the algorithms and the related data. The tool supports all Microsoft algorithms and can be used for various tasks such as: customer profiling, sales forecasting, market basket analysis, purchase predictions, targeted mailing, bank loans, credit card purchase validity, and more. The tool runs using SQL 2005 and 2008. Here are a couple of alternative location for x64 SQL 2005 (http://x64.sqlminds.com/dmcompanion) and IA64 SQL 2008 (http://ia64.sqlminds.com/dmcompanion).
If you want these tools deployed in your environment please, contact us. We give them for free as long as you hire us to develop your BI environment.
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|