Enterprise Explorer™ is a business intelligence tool that is intuitive, flexible, comprehensive, and quick to use. It pulls together the combined resources of Microsoft® SQL Server, SQL Server Reporting Services and SQL Analysis Services into a single user interface that provides an intuitive and flexible look at information in a familiar Microsoft® Windows® Explorer format.
A user can browse information in several different modes;
Folder View – data can quickly be browsed and the relationships between various entities within the system examined, offering the ability to quickly and easily navigate through many thousands of customers and products to find the information required.
Profile View – quickly locate information of interest and view predefined reports (referred to as “profiles”) that relate to that level. Different reports can be defined for each of the different levels of folders and entities.
Data View – information can be viewed flexibly using a pivot table style of tool. This allows a user to define particular aspects of the data of interest. Both summarised and detailed data views can be quickly constructed. Data can be sorted, filtered and broken down to any extent available within the data structures. Coloured shading can be applied to highlight trends. Although very powerful for spontaneously creating a one-off view, any such view defined by a user can be saved for reuse at a later time.
In addition, Enterprise Explorer provides;
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Quick and convenient access to various other pre-defined reports – available from drop-down lists located with the associated data.
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All profile and data views are capable of being exported as Excel™ spreadsheets or Adobe® Acrobat® documents in PDF format.
The client program is very simple to install. The configuration work is done entirely in the server-side models created in the SQL Server database, Analysis Services OLAP cubes and SQL Reporting Services.
The data structures displayed in Enterprise Explorer are based entirely on the structures defined in the OLAP cubes to which it attaches. We developed a cube for Microsoft Dynamics NAV® for demonstration purposes, but depending on any client’s use of the system, this can and should be customised.
Similarly, the various “profiles” displayed at each node need to be set up as reports. Some default profiles are available, but these need to be customised.
Enterprise Explorer is limited only to the extent that Microsoft SQL Server, Analysis Services and Reporting Services are limited, as it is simply a client program used to access these resources.
