I’ve already linked to Nigel Pendse’s initial comments on Gemini, which you can see here:
http://www.olapreport.com/Comment_Gemini.htm
However those nice people at the OLAP Report have just given me access to see the subscriber-only content, which is probably the most detailed write-up available (I assume Nigel has been briefed by the Gemini dev team):
http://www.olapreport.com/purchase/Reviews/gemini_preview.htm
It doesn’t say anything much new, but I guess if you’re someone like Qlikview you probably want to get as many details on this as you can! Nigel is much more positive about it all than I was; he may well have a better idea of MS’s proposed solutions to the management problems everyone’s been highlighting: "Microsoft has some clear ideas about the role IT will be able to play in Gemini deployments, but the details were slightly fuzzy during the October announcements. It promises more details will emerge in the following months".
He also notes the problem of Excel users needing to define multidimensional calculations and says "Microsoft has not provided details of how this will be done, except to emphasize that Gemini users will not need to learn MDX. It’s proposal is to allow simple dimensional tests in Excel-like formulas in Gemini. These Excel-like calculation rules will be equivalent to MDX, but far easier for an Excel user to understand". Hmm, we’ve already seen MDX and PEL try and fail to make multi-dimensional calculations easy to use… I wonder if we’ll have a third stab at the problem?
Andrew Wiles has a pretty good take on that with his Olap front end tools, where you can have a MDX selection, but create calculations on them just as you would with Excel by referencing columns (A, B, C) and rows (1,2,3) instead of members. It then creates the appropriate MDX behind the scenes. That\’s sure to help with this issue. http://it-workplace.co.uk/IOC.aspx.