I see on Amyn Rajan’s blog there’s another platform supporting MDX: Kognitio WX2 with its new Pablo (a pun on ‘Picasso’, which was an old code name for SSAS?) product. More details here:
It’s interesting that tight integration with Excel, which in theory should be Microsoft BI’s trump card, is being so widely copied by its competitors. After all this product, which sounds similar to what Teradata released last year and what’s possible with Oracle Exadata – all possible through the efforts of Simba – is what SSAS in ROLAP mode delivers on top of PDW and what BISM in passthrough mode will also deliver on PDW. Looking at it from another angle, however, it’s beneficial for Microsoft because all of these solutions provide more reasons for users to stick with Excel instead of moving to web-based or open source competitors, and they help cement Excel’s position as the BI client tool of choice; I suspect this is the more important consideration for Microsoft.
I wonder if other companies will be allowed to implement DAX as a query interface for their products, or be interested in doing so if it is possible?
