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May 28, 2002

Yogic Analysis

The NovaView OLAP client is powerful, flexible, and mind opening

By Larry Sackett

Continued from Page 1

All of the basic functions of MDX, such as swapping, nesting, and slicing dimensions, drill up and drill down, filters, and sorting are part of the NovaView user interface and can be used through simple drag-and-drop, point-and-click operations.

But Wait, There's More

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Other valuable features of NovaView 3.0 include:

A "Lookup" function that can access rapidly changing data, such as currency exchange rates, price lists, tax rates, and costs data — even though the data is stored in an external data source such as an Oracle, SQL Server, or Access database, or even an Excel workbook.
Cross-dimensional views that let users look at data across several dimensions simultaneously to see how sales and other measures are distributed across regions, sales teams, consumer demographics, promotions, and products.
The ability to create local cubes that are disconnected from the Analysis Services server. Users can save entire briefing books, including the necessary cube data, on their laptops for analysis at home or on trips.
Charts that are fully integrated with cross tabs. Users have a wide variety of chart types and styles to choose from. Users can select or hide row and column data in a chart by toggling dimension members on or off.

The architecture of the NovaView suite incorporates Microsoft's Analysis Services cubes, the server- and client-side PivotTable Services (the OLAP query and calculation engine supporting MDX), and Microsoft's Internet Information Services (IIS Version 4.0 or later) Web server running on Windows NT 4 or Windows 2000 professional (see Figure 3). The NovaView client and the Web server read and save XML briefing books and files. The Web component objects — charts, grids, slicers, toolbars, and so on — can be embedded in other Web applications.

Finding Its Way in the Market

While a significant player in Israel and Europe, Panorama hasn't gotten the attention it deserves in the United States. In an effort to gain market share when SQL Server 7.0 was first released, Panorama had licensed NovaView to Cognos Inc. Unfortunately for both parties, the relationship never really worked. In April 2001, Panorama resumed full responsibility for NovaView and is slowly building a U.S. partner network.

Panorama's NovaView is certainly one of the most powerful and flexible OLAP query tools available. The combination of Microsoft Analysis Services and Panorama NovaView is an excellent platform for business reporting, analysis, and CRM applications. With the addition of NovaView Web, Panorama is now at the forefront of OLAP and BI solutions providers.

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IT professionals, executives, and managers owe it to themselves to take a very serious look at NovaView (and Microsoft's Analysis Services) for data warehouse, BI, and decision-support applications. They will be pleasantly surprised.

Larry Sackett [lsackett@barrygrp.com] is president and CEO of The Barry Group and has more than 20 years of experience designing and implementing marketing database and decision-support systems.