Excel 2003 OLAP Add-in to connect SSAS 2008 cube

Question

I’ve got one question related to SSAS 2008. One of our customers are looking to use Excel 2003 OLAP Add-in to connect SSAS 2008 cube. Recently I found that Microsoft has removed link to Excel 2003 OLAP Add-in (this was the download link available earlier, now we get page cannot be found   http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=DAE82128-9F21-475D-88A4-4B6E6C069FF0&displaylang=en)  and not sure whether we should be going ahead or not.

 

So could you please let us know your recommendations on using Excel 2003 OLAP Add-in to connect to SSAS 2008. Do you see any issues with it?

Answer 1

Office 2003 expired in April this year so it is not on the market anymore. Excel 2007 or the coming release of Excel 2010, next year, are the only viable Excel alternatives.

You can find other third part front ends on this list: http://www.ssas-info.com/analysis-services-client-tools-frontend

HTH
Thomas Ivarsson

Answer 2

Thomas,

Your are right that Office 2003 experied in April. But they could use the same software for a few years . My customer has got larger user base and it takes some time for him to roll out to Excel 2007. So could you please let me know your recommendations / known issues in  using Excel 2003 OLAP Add-in to connect SSAS 2008 cube.

Thanks,
Ashok

Answer 3

Hi Ashok,

 

One thing I remember is: In Excel 2003 and earlier versions, which can only display raw measure values and not formatted values, which means you have to reformat the data again and it will spend more time on this. But Excel 2007 will display properly formatted measure values in most cases. Here is a good article about what is new in Excel 2007:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/HA100738731033.aspx

All thing the article listed you cannot simply achieve in 2003.

 

More information, I suggest you could refer to:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/office2007deploymentcompatibility/threads

 

And I think the most important thing is Excel 2003 expired, just as you can only find 2007 forums.

 

Hope this helps.

Raymond