Intelligencia – for your SSRS reports on an SSAS cube

I wrote a post a while back about the pros and cons of developing a Report Model based on a cube. I got two comments on it telling me to check out Intelligencia. I decided to look into it, and what can I say? I'm impressed...

Intelligencia is an add - in to Visual Studio which helps you build Reporting Services Reports on top of a cube. Those of you who have tried doing that in the past with what there is, probably remember that it wasn't terribly comfortable all of the time... First example that goes to mind? Creating an SSRS reporting against a cube with a Parent Child Dimension. Intelligencia lets you use that dimension very easily, also helping you pick the members you want from it (or from any dimension) with a few simple clicks.

It's pretty simple to use with its own sort of data source:

And from there on out, it's the use of their wizard.

Intelligencia looks and feels like something out of Office 2007 with the added perks of having selection windows in the formula bar for your MDX writing:

An MDX function library with intellisense:

And a VB function library as well.

It also a small warning just in case you made a mistake with the function you defined:

And you can use it just as you would use Excel, defining calculations on the formula line:

After you've finished designing your report, you can get out of their investigator and see the MDX that was created for you:

I would also recommend using their option for "Include hierarchy Name in Field Names" so you don't get lost in the with all the attribute hierarchies you included. Also, marking "Include IsTotal flags" should help you with further enhancing the design of your report.

So yeah, it's pretty cool and it has quite the friendly UI. I really think this is a very important tool for you if you're using Reporting Services on top of a cube, because the interface just turns the work to that much simple - both in the sense that work against the cube has become simple, and in the sense that working with Intelligencia itself is simple.

I would also like to mention that I have contacted IT Workplace support quite a few times during the evaluation period of the product and always got a very quick and helpful response (which is also VERY important).

So for the very least, I would really recommend you give Intelligencia an in depth look.