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About The OLAP Report |
You can contact Nigel Pendse, the author of this section, by e-mail on NigelP@olapreport.com if you have any comments or observations. This page was last updated on May 9, 2007 .
The OLAP Report is an independent research resource for organizations buying and implementing OLAP applications. This section provides more information about it in an FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) form.
How did The OLAP
Report start?
When did The OLAP Report first become available on the Web?
How is The OLAP Report researched?
How is The OLAP Report funded?
What does a subscription to The OLAP Report cost?
Why is some of The OLAP Report Web site freely accessible?
Can I get a free preview or trial of the subscriber material?
Does The OLAP
Report include information on OLAP applications as well as technologies?
Which products
are included in The OLAP Report?
Can I buy individual product reviews?
How are products chosen for inclusion in The OLAP Report?
Does The OLAP Report provide a good introduction to OLAP for
a novice?
Is The OLAP Report available in hardcopy form?
Does The OLAP Report Web site require a particular Web browser?
Is The OLAP Report available in languages other than English?
When was the last edition published and when is the next
edition?
Does The OLAP Report contain material reproduced from elsewhere?
How is The OLAP Report rated compared with other analyst research?
How is The OLAP Report related to The OLAP Survey? Do I get The
OLAP Survey as a subscriber to The OLAP Report?
The OLAP Report project began in October 1994, when I approached Business Intelligence (our first publisher), about a new project idea. I had known Business Intelligence for several years, and liked its strict vendor-independence and research-based approach to technology and business reports.
Having worked with decision support software since the mid 1970s, both as a user and as a vendor, I had been very disappointed by the shallowness of the coverage of OLAP by industry analysts. Most had never even used an OLAP tool and they seemed to be more concerned with checklists of often-irrelevant, vendor-promoted features than how products really worked and what they were capable of doing for users. It seemed to me that this was the equivalent of a motoring magazine written by non-drivers, and no more useful. I was also concerned that vendor-sponsored ‘research’ documents seemed to be too prevalent then, as now.
I was convinced that the OLAP market was about to enter a period of sustained boom and buyers needed clear, unbiased, better-informed help. In particular, they needed genuine research that wasn’t vendor-sponsored, performed by people who really understood the area.
We agreed to go ahead with the project and enlisted Richard Creeth to the team. Richard had extensive experience designing and implementing financial OLAP applications using a variety of products, and ran his own consulting firm that specialized in this area. Conversely, I had used, specified, sold and marketed such products for many years. The three of us met in December 1994 and the research commenced immediately in both the US and the UK.
Our original plan had been to produce a 350-page printed report, covering at least 15 OLAP products, by mid 1995. However, once the project got underway, we uncovered far more that needed saying than we expected, and the report that eventually emerged in August 1995 covered 23 products and many other topics in 520 pages, split into two volumes. Only 12 of those 23 products were still included in the final printed edition in 2001, though some of the others remain on the market in a limited way.
We had provisionally planned to do an updated printed second edition in 1997, but we hadn’t allowed for the speed of change in this area, or the Web, which altered all our plans. From not even mentioning the Web in the 1995 edition, we started publishing updates to individual chapters for subscribers on the new www.olapreport.com site in late 1996.
By July 1997, the whole of The OLAP Report was available in an updated form on the Web, which had, in effect, superseded the printed edition. But parallel printed editions continued to be produced until 2001.
“A word of thanks for the information contained within The OLAP Report. This is my third year of subscribing and I find the report an invaluable aid.” Matthew Croft |
In most cases, we interview vendors face-to-face, involving management, marketing and product development and management people. This involves seeing and testing the products in action. In some cases, we also install and test the software ourselves. We never review products without at least seeing them in use.
Typically, these meetings last about ten hours, but with larger vendors, they can extend to several long, all-day sessions involving 10–20 people. In particular, we insist that vendors prove their less believable boasts. We also speak to users, competitors and others to get a more complete view. We have interviewed vendors and users face-to-face in the US, UK, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands and Spain.
Vendors can see the reviews of their products before publication, and have an opportunity to correct factual errors then or later, but they have no power of veto over our opinions, conclusions and recommendations. Vendors also cannot pull out at this stage if they do not like the opinions in the review.
We also get a lot of valuable feedback from readers, so that errors can be corrected quickly on the Web site, one of the other advantages of online publication. Feedback comes from product users, consultants, vendors and even students.
Click here for more information on the authors.
High quality research like that found in The OLAP Report is expensive to produce, and it has to be funded. There are essentially three sources of funding for Web-based publications:
This commitment to independence means that The OLAP Report is entirely funded by subscription, and the rates have to reflect it.
Conversely, if vendors provide free reprints of other analyst research, you should enquire about whether the research was sponsored by the vendor, rather than simply reprinted after publication. In other words, was the ‘analysis’ originally commissioned and paid for by the vendor’s marketing department, or did the vendor pay to reprint independently produced research that merely happened to be favorable? Both types exist, though most vendor-distributed or downloadable reprints from free sites are actually of vendor-funded ‘research’ (which is really no more than disguised marketing material), and it’s worth finding out which is which before reading it.
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The OLAP Report is available for multi-user workgroup or individual use by annual subscription. Subscriptions for individual use or workgroups of under five users are available only for OLAP buyers. Because of their wider interest, vendors and consultants are instead offered larger workgroup licenses at discounted prices. Vendors may also purchase marketing rights to material from The OLAP Report — prices on application. Each user is supplied with a user ID and password which gives that person unlimited access to the Web site. If several people in your organization require access, then you must have a multi-user subscription (available at discounted prices). Renewals, and multi-year subscriptions, are also significantly discounted. Click here to register for free preview access to a small sample of the content. |
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The OLAP Report is available for workgroups or, exceptionally, for individual use. Subscriptions are listed in US dollars, but can be paid in any major currency. Discounts are available for larger groups and on renewal. Subscribers get on-line access to the equivalent of over 1500 printed pages, many of which will be updated during their period of subscription.
About a tenth of The OLAP Report is available without subscribing or even registering. This material does not include any of the detailed product reviews or positioning analyses. The reason for providing it is to allow non-subscribers to get some value from the site and to get a feel for the style, quality and depth of the overall site. It also ensures that The OLAP Report is noticed by search engines like Google. There are no restrictions on linking to these pages from other sites.
Yes, you can register for access to a small subset of the subscriber-only material. This lets you assess the style and level of detail provided, though in some cases, the preview material is older than that available to subscribers.
Yes, right from the first edition in 1995, The OLAP Report has included reviews on horizontal analytical applications, particularly in the financial consolidation and budgeting areas. We regard these as typical applications of OLAP technology and therefore a good fit in The OLAP Report. The OLAP Report also has general information on a range of other analytical applications based on OLAP technology. However, it does not include reviews of vertical applications, such as those used in banking, transport, etc, as they are too specialized.
You can always find which products are reviewed in The OLAP Report by looking
at the products index. This lists all the reviewed
products, including the version number, date when the review was last revised
and the length of the review. Some of the minor or discontinued products have
‘frozen’ reviews (indicated with an ice cube icon: 
),
meaning that the current review will not be updated again, but is kept in the
online archive.
“As well as product and general market analysis, The OLAP Report also provides excellent ‘white-papers’ on a wide range of BI/OLAP related topics, definitions, explanations and recommended approaches… which are all well worth a read for anyone wishing to fast-track their understanding of this business-empowering technology.” John Morter |
Yes, some reviews, analyses and case studies from The OLAP Report are now available for individual purchase, though only subscribers have access to the entire content. Individually purchased articles are provided in PDF form and are not subsequently updated, whereas subscribers view content on the Web and automatically get access to all content that is updated or added during the period of their subscription. Subscribers also pay a much lower fee than the collective price of the individual articles.
The most obvious requirement is that they must include OLAP capabilities; we are often approached by vendors of BI tools with little or no OLAP functionality, but have to refuse them. For a guide to OLAP requirements, see the section in The OLAP Report that defines OLAP.
It is also necessary that the vendor be prepared to cooperate with us in producing a tough, impartial review; we would not be able to guarantee accuracy without such cooperation. Vendors must be prepared to be open about how their products work, how they are priced, etc, and if they are not prepared to disclose such information, we cannot include them.
Beyond that, we take account of market demand; products with fewer than ten sites in production, or which are not actively marketing in the US or UK, would not normally be reviewed, even if the vendors are keen to be included.
No, The OLAP Report is not aimed at the many people who have just heard of OLAP and want a basic introduction to the topic. There are many other sites on the Web (typically from consultants and vendors) that provide this function, and there are also books available. The OLAP Report is aimed at organizations with a professional interest in OLAP (buying or selling OLAP products, implementing OLAP applications or investing in OLAP vendors), and they are assumed to already have a basic knowledge of the concept.
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The OLAP Report began in 1995 as a conventional 520-page printed report, but it grew too bulky and hard to update in that form, so from 2002 it became an online-only resource. The final printed edition in 2001 had 678 densely-packed pages, without even including all of the material available on the Web site. If it was still available in printed form, it would be over 1500 pages long. Now that The OLAP Report is Web-only, it includes many more screen shots, and can take advantage of color and links. It also has an efficient automatic site index, available to both subscribers and non-subscribers (so even non-subscribers can check on the contents).
This site is intended to provide useful information quickly and conveniently, not to be a test site or demonstration of the latest browser technology. It deliberately uses no cookies, frames, Java, ActiveX or plug-ins and few scripts, but it still will not display properly if used with old browsers or on machines with less than 16-bit color. Unlike with many other over-designed Web sites, you are always free to vary font size to suit your screen or printer (for example, by using <Ctrl>+<Mouse wheel> with modern mice and IE).
We find that it displays most accurately with Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera (though sometimes with a slightly different look). We recommend at least 1024x768 screen resolution with 16-bit color, although higher resolutions and more colors are obviously preferable (the pages are usually tested on IE6, using up to 1600x1200 resolution and 24-bit color). For best printed output, you may want to reduce the font size before printing.
The original printed edition of The OLAP Report was translated into a French edition. Now, however, The OLAP Report is too large, is updated too often and the content is too technical, for translated editions to be feasible. It is therefore now only available in this English-language form.
The OLAP Report is not a single document, but is a large Web site containing well over 100 sections. Some of these could be regarded as large reports in their own right, with the equivalent of up to 70 printed pages. These sections are updated separately, and each shows the date when it was last revised. Typically, at least one of these sections will be updated every week, so there is no concept of an ‘edition’ for the site as a whole.
| How has the
OLAP report helped you to select the software you use? As they say, “Truth has many faces and any one of them alone is a lie”. When vendors of OLAP products are just interested in pushing the positive points of their products, where does one turn to for the full picture? It’s The OLAP Report, which shows each product in the correct light, warts and all. Has it proved a useful educational resource for your OLAP team? Ever since I discovered it in 1998, The OLAP Report has been one of my two preferred sites for all things OLAP (the other was DM Review). Of course, when it came to specific products, it was The OLAP Report that I depended upon. Mr Nigel Pendse has also patiently answered my occasional queries on specific products. J K Rawal |
No, all material in The OLAP Report was written specially for it. For example, although all vendors produce case studies and white papers, The OLAP Report does not include any such material. We even try to avoid using vendors’ standard architectural diagrams, screen shots, etc; information of this nature in The OLAP Report is usually prepared specially.
The best quantitative evidence is from user surveys asking about influences on OLAP purchase. Among many other things, The OLAP Survey 4 asked respondents about their use of industry analysts when selecting OLAP products. Overall, 43.5 percent of OLAP buyers cited industry analyst research as an influence, which made it the most important single factor; this rose to 51.8 percent of those who had conducted a formal multi-product evaluation. Of those who cited industry analyst research as being influential, 30 percent cited The OLAP Report as the most important, just behind Gartner as 30.7 percent. No other analyst was cited by more than 13 percent of respondents.
The contents of the two resources are quite different and they are designed to complement each other. Both are about OLAP, and are vendor-independent, but the content and research methods are entirely different.
The OLAP Report is mainly qualitative, expert assessment of products and technologies, whereas The OLAP Survey is a quantitative analysis of the detailed experiences of hundreds of OLAP users. Unlike The OLAP Report, it has no vendor involvement as research is conducted only with user organizations. It does not include product reviews, case studies, etc. The OLAP Report is delivered via the Web and is constantly updated, whereas The OLAP Survey is published periodically in the form of a discrete report, available in soft copy and data mart formats.
The OLAP Report is published by BARC and The OLAP Survey by Survey.com, though BARC also acts as a distributor outside North America. The OLAP Report subscribers should therefore not expect free access to The OLAP Survey results, apart from the occasional quotes that are included. Equally, The OLAP Survey buyers do not get access to The OLAP Report contents.
This page is part of the free content of The OLAP Report, but ten times more information is available only to subscribers, including reviews of dozens of products, case studies and in-depth analyses. You can register for access to a preview of some of the subscriber-only material in The OLAP Report or subscribe on-line.
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