Hello all

I'm new to all the technologies above and so really need some help as I am solely in charge of building a Warehouse solution that uses all of the above!!

I have created a cube in OLAP that based on Usage statistics of our website; so each UserName is assigned to a CompanyID, and the database logs the number of hits against each person (as they use the site this information is recorded into a SQL database). These hits are date\time stamped and when summed up they show when and how often the User accessed the site.

I've written an MDX query that looks at this cube and, based on the CompanyID and date-range I give it, returns the amount of hits against each user for the given CompanyID, and within the given time-frame.

Now all i need to do is, using Crystal Reports 8.5 and Crystal Enterprises, produce static reports for users. Basically, our sales team will email us saying: "I need usage statistics for Shell for the entire year so far". we should then prepare the MDX query\Crystal Scheduler so that, overnight, the report gets generated. The next day all the user has to do is browse to Crystal Enterprises and pick up the report.

Please help: how do i do this? I have no idea how to build a front end onto an MDX query and somehow integrate Crystal Reports. Also, do you think the new Microsoft Reporting Services would be better for this?

Any help would be greatly appriciated! :-)

Thanks in anticipation

Maria

I don't know if it does it better but it does it. You've got a realy god whitepaper on the subject here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...lapasandrs.asp

Just a wild tought. . .

Have you tried creating a pivot table in Excel and then pointing it to the OLAP data source? This eliminates the need to write MDX as well as the need to re-create a report. The linked pivot table gets re-populated as the datasource gets more data.

You can save the Excel file in the network and then the users can just open it as needed. Crystal reports is a great tool, but Excel may still be better for this. MDX is for non static data, so using Crystal reports to create static reports defeats the purpose of MDX and cubes.

Go to this site www.mosha.com there is a lot of info in there.



Sal