With its third release of NovaView, Panorama Software has created a powerful suite of integrated client and Web-based online analytic processing (OLAP) query tools that both meets the needs of the most demanding business analyst and makes access to the resulting information quick, easy, and understandable for executives and managers.

Panorama also has addressed the concerns of IT professionals about supporting large numbers of LAN-based desktop applications while maintaining security for confidential data. As the use of OLAP for both analysis and reporting applications has increased, these concerns have moved center stage. Panorama completely rewrote NovaView in a component object model and moved much of the NovaView functionality to thin-client Web applications — with security down to the cell level.

Enhancements in Step with Microsoft

Panorama, an Israeli developer of business intelligence (BI) software, wrote the OLAP engine that was later acquired by Microsoft and released as OLAP Services with the introduction of SQL Server 7.0. The first release of NovaView was concurrently developed as the query tool for OLAP Services. Panorama has maintained a strong partnership with Microsoft since the launch of OLAP Services and this third release of NovaView takes full advantage of the enhancements Microsoft has made to OLAP Services, now renamed Analysis Services and packaged with SQL Server 2000.

These enhancements include support for new financially oriented dimension types, custom roll-ups (used for financial analysis and reporting), write-back functions for budgeting and forecasting, dimension- and cell-level security, drill-through, data mining, server-based named member sets (for example, top n customers), and HTTP connections to remote OLAP servers.

Panorama has added many other features that extend the functionality of Analysis Services. These include geographical information systems (GIS) mapping from within NovaView (see Figure 1), a drill-through feature that lets users select which fields to retrieve from a data warehouse fact table, and easy-to-use wizards for creating filters, calculated members, name sets, and exceptions. Many of the enhancements to both Analysis Services and NovaView will make it easier, quicker, and less expensive for companies to implement OLAP-based financial reporting, budgeting, and sales analysis applications. Executives and managers will be able to analyze performance data in ways that were nearly impossible just a few years ago.

Small But Strong

The NovaView Web application is surprisingly robust for a small footprint (only 190K) Java applet. It provides all the functionality most business users require of an OLAP reporting and analysis tool, including drill-up and drill-down in dimensions, slicing of data, filtering data, exceptions reporting, searching for dimension members, sorting data, and swapping and nesting dimensions in cross tabs. These functions are readily available through a taskbar or by right-clicking on rows or columns (see Figure 2).

Panorama has made clever use of XML to store briefing books, folders, and views on the Web server in a tree hierarchy. Users can navigate to different books, folders, or views in a familiar Windows Explorer-like environment. The user interface is very functional, visually appealing, easy to use, and virtually identical across the Web and client versions, although many more analytic features are available in the client.

The NovaView Web application was written in Java and provides a component object model, meaning that fully functioning elements of NovaView, such as cross tabs, charts, and slicers, can be embedded in other Web applications and can be automated or queried using the component's methods and properties. Good examples of how the components would be used are digital dashboard or Web portal applications.

NovaView Web is supported by the NovaView client, designed for power users and report authors who will publish interactive views to the Web server. The NovaView client is feature-rich and includes all the tools required for very sophisticated analytic applications and report writing. Most companies who use NovaView will discover that they can substantially reduce the amount of paper reports and Excel spreadsheets users currently rely on.

Another Point of View

The GIS mapping application shown in Figure 1 is based on Microsoft's Mappoint 2002, which is implemented as an ActiveX control add-in in the NovaView client. As OLAP data is displayed in the NovaView cross-tab, it is also presented in a map view. The data in the map view changes as the user changes cross-tab data by swapping or slicing dimensions and measures. All the functionality of the Mappoint desktop application is available in the ActiveX control and can be used within NovaView, providing GIS capabilities typically found only in higher-end GIS systems.

Maps provide a highly intuitive way to analyze data and make it much easier for users to understand the basic elements of their business. Panorama has hit a home run with its integration of the Mappoint ActiveX control.

MDX Made More Approachable

The query and calculation language in Analysis Services and NovaView is called MDX, (for "multidimensional expressions"). The MDX expression language is part of Microsoft's OLE DB for OLAP standard and is the way in which client applications access data from a Microsoft OLAP cube. MDX is a very powerful language but can be daunting to users for all but the most basic functions.

Both the release 1.0 and 2.0 versions of NovaView hid much of the complexity of MDX from the casual user, but exposed it to knowledgeable users of MDX. NovaView 3.0 takes the use of MDX to a new level with a host of wizards and dialog boxes that make it easier to query OLAP cubes without users having to know all the functions and syntax of MDX.