I’ve been meaning to blog about the quality of support for Analysis Services in Report Builder for some time now, but to be honest the thought of doing so depressed me – I prefer to blog about functionality that I like and works well (even though, looking at my usage stats it’s the negative posts on this blog that get the most attention). However Pablo Mugica has just brought to my attention the following KB article which details the ‘known issues that may occur’ when you try to use Report Builder with AS:
So, no support for parent/child attributes, ordering of members or KPIs amongst other things. And it doesn’t even mention the bizarre (although it makes sense for relational data sources) method of selection/navigation and the rules on where you can put attributes and measures on a report that I still haven’t worked out. Hohum. I hope they make more of an effort for the next version.
And SQL Server is the only source database "officially" supported in the RTM for Report Builder\’s "natural" semantic model (Oracle and other DB support is projected in future). So, the AS 2005/UDM approach has to be adopted with non-SQL Server data sources – don\’t know how palatable it will be, for users immersed in relational reportin tools!