XML based Web Analytics & OLAP

Reporting tools have grown to become more comprehensive and visually

informative than what they used to be. The way these reports are created has

also seen a lot of changes over the years. There are solutions available that

allow you to simply design your report in a visual editor without bothering

about the underlying code that works behind the scenes. We take up one such

reporting solution here. It has a free version called Logi Report and a

commercial package called Logi Info.

Both Logi products come with impressive capabilities, allowing you to create

reports in diverse formats that include charts and graphs, complex multiple

reports, and even allow creation of drill down reports as well as multi-layer

and drill down charting. The latest builds also include, amongst other features

AJAX enabled components and support for Ad-hoc reporting and OLAP. The only

difference is with respect to the components that are provided. For example

Processes and Analysis Grids are available with Logi Info, but not with Logi

Report.

Your database should support ADO.NET, OLEDB or ODBC in order to work with

this solution. As these are pretty common standards,  you won't face issues

while connecting the solution to a wide variety of databases.

Logi Studio



This has a standard multi panel layout with panels for displaying components,
project files, suggestions, attributes or properties of components being

currently used. You can develop reports and publish the solution to IIS all from

these panels.

Any newly created report application has four parts-Definition File, Report

Header, Body and Footer. Once the skeletal structure is ready, you can design

your report on the fly by clicking through the elements and selecting properties

as required. We were impressed by Logi Studio's ability to give you neat reports

on the fly. The info panel contains a find tab that allows you to search for the

component you are looking for. It's a pretty handy feature if you get caught up

during report creation when looking up components. The basic methodology remains

constant no matter what you are developing using the studio. It's all about

drag/drop working and setting values for the attributes of elements added.

That's not all. You have a drag and drop query editor and a free style-sheet

editor as well to ease out these tasks.

The Query Editor allows quick editing and verification of queries with options to create any simple or complex query

Web-based reporting



This is a really interesting feature, allowing you to create a web service based
reporting application on the fly. The process is pretty easy. We created a

connection to a web service component and then, as usual, the exercise left was

designing the report body. Even while creating slightly more complex

applications such as analysis grids or even OLAP grids, the resultant is always

an application to be hosted on IIS.

Analytics



This component is only available with Logi Info. For designing the grid we used
a sample database from MSDN, running on SQL Server 2005. The complex grid is

also straight forward. It has a property called 'AJAX pages', which if set to

'true' enables asynchronous page updation. Once the grid and its child elements

are in place, you can set individual properties for each of the 'Analysis Grid

Column' components added, including enabling filters, aggregation, and similar

functions that might be used once the analysis grid comes into play. You can

also add 'Actions' to these columns that define user interactivity over the

component.

OLAP



Logi's OLAP components are pretty handy for creating OLAP solutions with a web
based front-end. Here again it will not feel like a crucial battle trying to get

in grips with the components and their usage. As much to anybody's pleasure they

also retain the same model as any simpler or complex component in Logi products.

The analysis grid can be created quickly using drag-drop and attribute value editing to give AJAX enabled components over the web for high interactivity

You can almost get started in a zap with the OLAP grid as you need to define

just the data layers, followed by MDX Query or expressions and then pick up the

existing cube for the source. If that sounds too easy to believe you can check

out the OLAP sample on their web-site for an initial look.

In Conclusion



Light weight modeling of components throughout the different product lines and a
uniform easy to use studio makes both these products a good option.