Essbase Vs. Microsoft Analysis Services

Question

Hello,We are comparing Essbase w/EIS to microsoft analysis services and I seem to have a problem. We have an outline with 8 dimensions and one of the dimensions has almost 84,000 members. On an essbase sun solaris server with 4cpu 4gb ram the cube is about 6GB and takes over 4 hours to calc(no formulas just calc all). On a single cpu windows 2k machine analysis services runs the same data into the same type of outline and rolls it up in about 30 minutes. To be fair I ran the same cube on the windows box in essbase and killed it after 13 days of calculating without finishing.The cubes are the same, have the same datasource and the same members(or whatever they are called in AS2k) and the results are the same.Any ideas why AS2k is so much faster? I'm loathe to switch to a Microsoft product, but the numbers don't lie. This is only 6 months of data and we are planning to have 4 years worth before long. The calc time is unacceptable in essbase.Thanks,-Brian

Answer 1

Well, the decision of which tool to choose should not be a function of who the vendor is - you should choose the right tool for the job.No - numbers don't lie - AS2K is much faster for straight up consolidations than Essbase. However, there are a few things to consider:1) Essbase tends to be a bit faster for querying (ad hoc analysis) than analysis services. Do some benchmarking on end user performance.2) Essbase scales better for large numbers of queries than AS2K - try hitting the server with lots of queries at once and see what happens.3) What is the purpose of this app? Is it just straight up consolidation? Is there going to be write back? If not, are there other apps you are looking to develop that will? Essbase is stronger than AS2K with respect to write back.4) Are there any complex calculation requirements? AS2K does not have a procedural calculation language. Calculations in AS2K are dynamic - calculated members and cells.5) Do you have ragged hierarchies? These are are hierarchies that are not symetrical - AS2K does not consolidate ragged hierarchies, so they are slower to query if they are large.6) Is the Essbase model tuned? I don't know how much Essbase work you have done, but that could be a factor (note - AS is usually faster than Essbase on rollups no matter what the configuration, all other things being equal).7) What front ends are you looking at for this tool? Who is the audience? Have you looked at the choices of front end tools of AS2K vs Essbase?My point here is that there is more to consider than just calc time. Sure, its great if a big cube calcs in 30 minutes, but what good is that if end user performance is poor, or the required calculations are not available?Anyway, just food for thought.Regards,Jade==================================Jade ColeSenior Business Intelligence ConsultantClarity [email protected]