Should NAV 5.0 Business Analytics to be taken seriously

paurola

Not so long ago, I was adviced NOT to look into NAV BA, since it was supposed to be of a dying creed.

At the moment I'm somewhat confused. The BA objects in NAV have been improved in 5.0 and it does support SQL 2k5 - should it be taken into account after all? I have always been wondering, why to build a user interface for SQL Business Analytics (or SSAS) into NAV - why not use SSAS as intended - straight from the Analysis Manager?

I need to make a decision on selecting the right technique on how to use SSAS on NAV databases in the near future. What will happen if we dig into NAV BA now - would most of the work we did now be obsolete, when the Major version update 6.0 (or who knows what the final version number will look alike) will see the daylight...

Slawek_Guzek

The right technique is to use BIDS + SSIS +SSAS as it is much more flexible solution. You can clean your data, do lot of stuff automatically. Then still you can use NAV BA client (which is in fact Targit IT client) to see and analyse your cubes.

BA cube builder in NAV is simpler and much less flexible IMHO - it allows you to build your cubes straight from your NAV data, but I'm afraid that's all. And the cube builder granule costs extra money - all the necessary tools you have for free in SQL.

Regars,
Slawek