Use the set of Web controls (OLAP Grid and OLAP Chart) to add OLAP and Visual Analysis functionality to your web applications. Your web pages can display analytical data as tables and charts so that your visitors can see what they want in a way they want.
There're two versions of RadarCube for ASP.NET:
The special cache mechanisms and visual improvements allow working with databases containing up to 1,000,000 records (and in the case of MSAS version - practically with Cubes of any size), and with dimensions of many a thousand members.
RadarCube supports a few methods of saving/restoring the state of OLAP slice: the data may be saved both by an end-user and programmatically. The state files are cross-platform - the data saved in WPF can be read in WinForms or in ASP.NET-version of RadarCube, and vice versa.
Moreover, the Direct version also supports a saving mode for Cellset with the Cube data.
RadarCube may serve as data source for other controls - in this case RadarCube provides its current Cellset as data source. Data can be exposed in different modes - see the RadarCube documentation for details.
In addition to copying to the Clipboard, RadarCube allows exporting an OLAP cellset into many other popular formats.
RadarCube has lots of options for tuning its appearance and changing the contents
of cells upon export, enabling/disabling paging and many other things.
RadarCube Direct supports many types of aggregating functions and, moreover, allows
you to implement your own aggregating functions. Number, string or data fields can
be used as measures.
The Direct-version also supports the measures calculated on the fact table row level
- a value of such measure is calculated sequentially for every row of the fact table
during its fetching. The source data for measure calculation of this type is the
information of the current row of the fact table and the rows of the dimension table
related to it.
Moreover, both MSAS and Direct versions support measures calculated from the current
cellset data. The way of calculating can be implemented programmatically.
Also it is possible to add measures, defined by MDX expressions.
Both the Direct and the MSAS versions allow creating additional calculated members
inside any hierarchy. These members come very handy for, say, displaying some intermediate
results. The algorithms of calculating such members are implemented programmatically
in the appropriate control's event handlers.
There's also an option of creating calculated hierarchy members
through the end-user interface, with MDX expressions.
Informational attributes contain additional information about dimension members.
For example, for "Personnel" dimension the attributes may include information
about home addresses and phone numbers. Usually attributes are presented as fields
of the same dimension table that describes the dimension itself. A short video below
will demonstrate you how to define attributes with Cube Editor and the way it looks
in OLAP Grid.
On the core level RadarCube supports a few types of hierarchies:
RadarCube is the only OLAP-client that simultaniously supports a few types of drilling. These are:
The same measure can be displayed in Grid in different modes: it can be exposed
in its' absolute mode - as a value, or in relational - in per cent value from the totals by columns or by rows.
Besides standard OLAP operations, such as pivoting and drilling, RadarCube also
supports member grouping. Groups may be created in hierarchies of any kind. Member
grouping makes understanding and analyzing an OLAP-slice much easier, for example,
applying the Pareto principle, you can save the "unimportant" for the
current analysis hierarchy members into member groups.
Any hierarchy level may be sorted in three ways: in alphabetical order, in descending
order or by default (with elements coming in the same order they do in the table
or on the MSAS server). Besides, you can programmatically override all three methods,
assigning "ascending" and "descending" order any custom meaning.
For example, you can range the months not in alphabetical order, but from January
to December.
Sorting by value allows an analyst to quickly pick out OLAP-cube elements he needs
for the current analysis. It's worth saying, that the cells may be sorted not just
by their absolute values, but by their per cent relation to rows' or columns' totals.
RadarCube allows using complicated filters applied to an arbitrary subset of members
of different dimensions and hierarchies. At that, it doesn't matter if the filtered
dimensions are situated in the active area (of rows or columns) - the applied filters
and Cellset configuration are not interdependent.
Moreover, besides the filters applied to hierarchy members, there're also context
and visual filters - see other sections of "Detailed features".
The result of applying context filters depends on the currently displayed Cellset
and on the Cube data. For example, it is possible to apply such filters as "Show
3 most significant members of the Product Categories level by Internet Sales Amount
values", "Show only the members that contain "ic" in their names",
or "Display the data related to the third quarter of 2003". The context
filters may be applied not only to dimensions, but to measures as well/ like: "Show
the data cells with Sales Amount value over $1,000,000".
Moreover, besides the context filters, there're also visual filters and filters
applied to separate hierarchy members - see other sections of "OLAP specific
features ".
Unlike filters for hierarchy members or context filters, visual filter is of the
visual type - it simply lets you hide the values beyond the threshold defined by the user - without recalculating the whole Cube.
RadarCube supports editing Cube cells.
Native MSAS Writeback is used for the MSAS version, but for the Direct-version a
programmer will have to implement the preferred way of changing the database.
RadarCube supports browsing database data, aggregated into a displayed Cube cell
(drillthrough). This operation is supported in both the MSAS- and the Direct-versions of RadarCube.
RadarCube OLAP Grid and Chart support three different ways of visualization: with the standard DHTML, using a Silverlight application,
embedded into an ASP.NET control, or through a Silverlight control designed for using in web-based Silverlight applications. Though these
are different controls, they have similar API and functionality so you can choose which one to use.
Moreover, the HTML version of RadarCube OLAP controls is optimized for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets so you can add OLAP functionality
in the mobile version of your BI portal.
In HTML OLAP Grid it is very easy to define the conditions when the cells will change their background/foreground colors. There are two types of such conditions:
The color modifiers can be set using the known “pivoting” mechanism either from under the code or through the user interface.
The UI has the special areas for this purpose: the two pivot areas named “Foreground area” and “Background area” and one area
displaying the legends – color scale or color ranges. On one hand these areas show the currents state of the color modification
in the grid, on the other hand they allow to define the hierarchy or measure used for modification – you only need to choose the needed
element from the cube structure tree or from another panel and drop it to the Background/Foreground area.
When a hierarchy used for modification the colors are defined using the first visible level of the hierarchy – each member takes its own color,
so the cells that belong to that member are rendered with this color.
When a measure is used for modification all cells are rendered marked with colors no matter what measure they display. Also there is no need
for the measure to be located in the Value area, the cells will be marked anyway depending on the values of this measure. Thus the color
modification is another independent parameter which allows making the data more understandable.
The color modifiers are saved in the grid layout.
It is possible to programmatically change the contents of OLAP Grid cells, change the cell text, and insert images and icons into cells and even arbitrary HTML, Silverlight or ASP.NET fragments. OLAP Grid will automatically adjust the size of the cell to its contents.
The width of Grid columns is automatically adjusted to the contents of the cell,
no matter what exactly they contain: text, images, or something else.
Naturally, you can change cell’s width, if you like.
The option of page viewing hierarchy members is enabled in RadarCube OLAP Grid by
default. The exact settings can be selected individually for each hierarchy: you
can set the number of elements on a page, or disable paging altogether. You can
also use the option of page-viewing in the hierarchy filters editor.
RadarCube offers an advanced system of context menus that provides users a quick access to all control's options. But more that that: any additional function may be implemented into RadarCube programmatically and then accessed via the context menu.
RadarCube's interface is very convenient for localization - all the lines visible
for an end user, can be translated into any language. Moreover, any translation
made by any user is also available to the rest of them, and is included into the
next release of RadarCube. Thus, at the moment RadarCube is translated - fully or
partially - into more than 20 languages.
By default, RadarCube uses the preferred language of an end-user's browser - but
there is an option of strictly defining the main language for RadarCube.
RadarCube allows commenting on the contents of the cells, saving the comment even
if the position of the cell in the cellset is changed. All comments can be stored in
the state file and read later.
RadarCube OLAP Grid allows you to paint cells with different colors, depending on
their values and a selected color scheme. This makes presentation of OLAP-data much
more visual.
Silverlight visualization of RadarCube OLAP Grid supports three selection modes that can be transformed into one another simply by pressing Shift or Ctrl.
The purpose of two additional modes was to achieve a better presentation of information in the Grid, visualizing in different colors and histograms the full
range of values from the selected cells.
The selected Grid area (including all affected measures and members) may also be copied to Clipboard and then pasted to another application for further analysis.
Visualizing OLAP-slice is possible both by the OLAP Grid and the OLAP Chart controls. In the first case, the information will be presented as a cross-tabulated table, in the other case, as a set of different charts.
OLAP Chart supports shape, color and size modificators, i.e. it allows using different
measures and dimensions as additional conditions and elements of visualization.
That means that the color, size or shape of a point (or another Chart element) can
be changed depending on values assigned to measures in a multidimensional Cube cell.
It significantly increases the clearness of the presented OLAP data.
An OLAP-slice can be visualized – if necessary – by Areas, Lines, Splines, Bars, Pies and Points. End-users are able to select the type of visualization through a convenient context menu.
Both X and Y axes of the diagram are able to display hierarchies as well as measures. In case, measures will be selected for both the X and the Y axes, we’ll see the visualized correlation between measures on both axes of the charts, depending on the factors (hierarchies), set by the Detail-modificator.
The drilling operation in OLAP Chart is somewhat different from the same operation
in OLAP Grid: OLAP Grid supports only the step-by-step drilling of a value, while
OLAP Chart visualizes the whole value of elements on the same level, while intermediate
levels may be skipped.
For example, for the Year-Quarter-Month hierarchy it is possible to visualize only
the "Year" and the "Month" levels, skipping the "Qarter".
The values of a few measures can be displayed simultaneously on the same diagram,thus making their visual comparison easy.
RadarCube OLAP Grid Direct-version satisfies the "medium trust" specification
that allows using it on most shared hostings provided by ISP, without any additional
setting of security policy.
Each dimension member, displayed in OLAP Grid, can have the attributes containing
additional information about it. For example, for the list of company's personnel
there can be the following attributes: personal email addresses and phone numbers
or the date of employment.
RadarCube supports MSAS Actions, such as URL, Drillthrough, Rowset etc. All these actions are interpreted according to their description in the MSAS Cube, and are accessible through the context menus of the corresponding RadarCube cells.
In the MSAS-versions for the data cells that deal with time measurement there is
an option of using the "Time Intelligence" features - a powerful means
for statistical analysis of Time series. It can be accumulating amounts, moving
average or evaluating values growth in comparison to the previous period, etc.
Time Intelligence functions are available through the context menu of data cells.
As many other things in RadarCube, the Time Intelligence menu can be tuned programmatically.
Not only can RadarCube be used as a tool for browsing a multidimensional cube, but it can also display the results of MDX-queries. In that case, the Grid doesn't support such operations as drilling, pivoting, sorting, grouping, and filtering, but as always you’ll be able to change a cell's contents and its look and feel, as well as fix the row/column headers.
Our control is installed on a pure ASP.NET platform and does not require installation of any additional library, like ASP.NET AJAX, ASP.NET Toolkit or any third-party controls. The control may be installed on ASP.NET 3.5 or higher.
For and end-user our OLAP control may be visualized in two variants: either using a standard HTML-code or as a Silverlight application (either embedded in ASP.NET control or not). The HTML-form of the control is more universal, while the Silverlight-form has a modern touch to it and is more interactive.
Whatever visualization form you use, the control is 100% AJAX-enabled. At the same time the control is fully compatible with the ASP.NET AJAX library (though it doesn't require its installation), and is able to operate in that environment.
As a data source the control supports an MSAS server version 2000 or higher or any other database that has a NET provider. Due to the special cache technology the control is able to operate with bases of up to 1,000,000 records, and in case it's an MSAS-version - with databases of almost unlimited size. It's the only control that is able to fetch data from several database tables and support both "Star" and "Snowflake" schemas on the MOLAP-core level.
Be careful! The commercial version of the control is shipped in two versions: Direct (for working with databases) and MSAS (for working with a Microsoft Analysis Services (server). Make sure you've ordered the correct version!
In addition to its flexible settings, the Grid has different popup menus that make it easy to access the RadarCube numerous functions. The menus are truly context-dependent and provide unique options for each of the Grid cells, depending on both the cell type and its content. Moreover, you can easily customize any popup menu programmatically.
RadarCube OLAP Grid control is fully PROTECTED. A client receives only the visualization of data - any information concerning data sources or the like does NOT get to the client.
RadarCube has a growing trend of unifying Desktop and Web platforms with its mobile representations. No matter which platform you work on - you will have the similar look and feel and almost the same API. This will allow you to share your code between the programming platforms and your users may move to a different platform with ease. In addition the cubes and states saved on one platform may be read on any different platform so you can use the same data right away without any additional steps.
The RadarCube core has a detailed and well-documented API, which allows you to perform any OLAP-slice modifications from within your application, obtain information about any Cube or Grid cell. You can create your own sorting patterns and apply your own context filtering. It can surely be said that RaradCube is a constructor you can use to create OLAP-reports of any complexity.