Reporting and analyzing data with Intelligent Cubes

You can perform all of your reporting and data analysis within an Intelligent Cube, without executing any queries against the data warehouse. Once an Intelligent Cube is created and then published so its data is available, multiple reports can be created to connect to the Intelligent Cube (see Sharing Intelligent Cubes).

Reporting on an Intelligent Cube provides quick access to data, as the data has been pre-aggregated. This returns results much faster than querying the data warehouse. Reporting on Intelligent Cubes also allows you to use all of the OLAP Services features, including derived elements, which allow you to group attribute elements in a report on the fly, to provide a new view of report data for analysis and formatting (see Derived Elements).

Reports that connect to an Intelligent Cube are restricted to only the data available within the Intelligent Cube. This ensures that report results are returned quickly, and it also prevents full ROLAP analysis. Report filters, consolidations, and custom groups are not available for reports that connect to Intelligent Cubes.

While reporting on Intelligent Cubes, there are a few scenarios that can produce unexpected results. See Troubleshooting reports connected to Intelligent Cubes for more information.

This section discusses the features available for reports that connect to Intelligent Cubes, and how the reports utilize standard reporting features and OLAP Services features to execute reporting and analysis manipulations completely within the Intelligent Cube. This section includes information on the small differences in workflows and standards when using standard reporting features in these reports: