Dynamics Community Forum Thread Details

Analysis Cubes for Excel/ Excel Report Builder

Which is better Analysis Cubes for Excel or Excel Report Builder? What is the difference?

Thanks

I can think of two huge differences in this tool.

1. Since ExcelBuilder (EB) is based on Smartlists, by default it presents detailed lists of data to the user. Based on those lists, you can create a pivot table. Analysis Cubes for Excel (ACE) by default presents data in pivot table form. It is not the easiest tool for simply extracting lists of data.

2. This is the BIG difference: EB queries data real-time from the GP SQL Server. If you're analyzing millions of records, it's going to take a very long time to refresh, and in fact, Excel may not be able to handle the transaction size. On the other hand, ACE is based on SQL Analysis Services, which takes a copy of live GP data nightly (or on some other basis). After the copy is made, the "cubes" are pre-processed. This means that when you report against them, many of the calculations are already performed. Reporting on a large data set will be much, much faster via ACE than via EB.

Happy trails!