Reading all the fuss about the Silverlight announcement (see http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/apr07/04-15WPFEPR.mspx) makes me wonder how long it’s going to be before we have a Microsoft BI client tool that makes use of it. I’m seeing more and more of Crystal Xcelsius in the marketplace (which is based on Flash, which Silverlight is competing with) and business people seem to be very impressed with some of the wizzy animations you can do with it – see, for example, Janne Pyykkö’s demo here http://jpbi.blogspot.com/2007/04/crystal-xcelcius-playful-3d-demo.html. Surely it can only be a matter of time…?
UPDATE: James Wakefield has just sent me this link to an article he wrote on hooking Xcelsius up to any XMLA compliant OLAP database:
That certainly would be nice. The lack of a reusable web-based BI client component has long been a big hole in the product line – especially for ISVs (like us) who build on SSAS.