The Excel 12 Blog Rides Again, or “CUBE Functions Part 1”

re: The Excel 12 Blog Rides Again, or “CUBE Functions Part 1”

Phylyp — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 11:47:34 GMT

Welcome back David. We missed ya!

re: The Excel 12 Blog Rides Again, or “CUBE Functions Part 1”

XL-Dennis — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 12:28:55 GMT

David,

Looks very interesting to me and it looks like Excel 12 will be a hot candidate as part of future BI-solutions.

What about the performance?

Kind regards,
Dennis

re: The Excel 12 Blog Rides Again, or “CUBE Functions Part 1”

da-fan — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 12:42:55 GMT

Welcome back! Missed you, yes we did =)

re: The Excel 12 Blog Rides Again, or “CUBE Functions Part 1”

David Gainer — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 19:09:10 GMT

Thanks folks. XL-Dennis, we don't issue a query for each cell ... we batch them up, so performance is quite snappy.

re: The Excel 12 Blog Rides Again, or “CUBE Functions Part 1”

Noel — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 19:32:53 GMT

David, I've read all of your posts but this is my first comment or question. Will the cube function work with other data sources other than SQL Server Analysis Services?

re: The Excel 12 Blog Rides Again, or “CUBE Functions Part 1”

Harlan Grove — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 20:31:50 GMT

How about plain ODBC data sources? Will Excel 12 once again include the SQL.REQUEST function or some other simple means of fetching data from plain database tables rather than OLAP cubes?

re: The Excel 12 Blog Rides Again, or “CUBE Functions Part 1”

Colin Banfield — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 22:14:47 GMT

<<David, I've read all of your posts but this is my first comment or question. Will the cube function work with other data sources other than SQL Server Analysis Services? <<

More specifically, will the Cube functions and other OLAP features work with other data sources that support MDX?

re: The Excel 12 Blog Rides Again, or “CUBE Functions Part 1”

KoryS — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 01:31:49 GMT

This might have been addressed in a previous post, but are all of the newer features of Excel also being considered for the Office Web Components as well, specifically the PivotList control? Also, will users be able to break hierarchies (e.g. remove/hide level 2 within a hierarchy dimension from view without removing the entire dimension) within Excel (like OWC does today)?

Thanks!

Kory

re: The Excel 12 Blog Rides Again, or “CUBE Functions Part 1”

David Gainer — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 03:32:06 GMT

Howdy – to try and answer all questions.

1) These functions are designed to work with SQL Server Analysis Services. That said, Analysis Services can “front end” data from almost any data source – SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, etc. – so the data can come from anywhere. To be clear, though, you need to set up Analysis Services. See my earlier posts on Analysis Services for reasons you might want to do that. We communicate with Analysis Services using the Analysis Services OLEDB provider.

2) We have thought about similar concepts for other data sources directly from Excel, but this capability does not exist in Excel 12. It is on our list of things to think about for future versions.

3) Yes, you can hide levels without removing the dimension. See “Hiding levels of hierarchies” in this post on PivotTables: http://blogs.msdn.com/excel/archive/2006/01/12/512379.aspx

4) The Office Web Components have not changed significantly in Office 12.

re: The Excel 12 Blog Rides Again, or “CUBE Functions Part 1”

Harlan Grove — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 19:46:40 GMT

Re other data sources, specifically tables accessible via ODBC

This functionality *USED* *TO* exist in Excel. There used to be a function named SQL.REQUEST. It's still available as a download from Microsoft's own web site, and Microsoft claims it works with Excel 11 (I have no first hand experience with XL11 to confirm or deny this claim).

Will the SQL.REQUEST and XLODBC.XLA add-in still be available after Excel 12 rolls out? Will they work with XL12? If they still work with XL12, why not include them on the XL12 CDs? Putting that a different way, was there any good reason to have left XLODBC.XLA off of the XL11 CD?

If I were asking about *NEW* functionality, I'd have left it at your last response that you have no plans at this time. However, I'm asking about *EXISTING* functionality that was an optional part of Excel through Excel 10 and dropped for no apparent good reason in Excel 11. There's a wee small chance you all might acknowledge you screwed up about that and take the opportunity to correct the situation. Seems it was a "design decision" to force Excel users to adopt SQL Server Analytical Services. Having observed Microsoft's behavior over a few decades, it wouldn't come as a surprise that you'd use one package as a lever to motivate customers to buy other packages.

re: The Excel 12 Blog Rides Again, or “CUBE Functions Part 1”

David Gainer — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 08:04:46 GMT

Hi Harlan, sorry I missed your question in my previous comment. Our plan is that SQL.REQUEST have the same level of support in 12 as in 11.

Analysis Services offers a range of BI and OLAP capabilities beyond what relational tables offer, so, in my opinon, I see SQL.REQUEST and our new OLAP functions as addressing somewhat different scenarios.

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Excel 2007 and SQL Server Analysis Services 2005

Pavan's Weblog — Thu, 10 May 2007 07:14:44 GMT

With Excel 2007 Microsoft has elevated Excel as a world class BI tool in conjunction with SSAS 2005 and

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