Need a easy to set-up and flexible web front-end for a data warehouse built in SQL Server 2008. I’d like to be able to expose both SSRS reports and SSAS cubes for browsing.
Seems like Microsoft wants us all to use Sharepoint for this, but I want something I can expose to internal users as well as customers, so I don’t think Sharepoint will work (right?).
The other big approach people take seems to be coding up a custom ASP.NET app, which I have no desire to do.
Basically just want something like Cognos or Business Objects, but as a front end to SSRS and SSAS, not some proprietary data structure.
Why is this so hard to find – seems like it would be a common need. Why doesn’t Microsoft make this?
Only one I’ve found so far is Report Portal (www.reportportal.com), which seems pretty good, but not stellar. As far as the big guys go, it looks like MicroStrategy (microstrategy.com) can work with native SSAS cubes, but for general reporting has it’s own structures. Graphs and interface look good though, so would appreciate hearing from anyone with experience integrating Microstrategy and SQL Server as well.
Thanks!
The Enterprise version of SharePoint does what you want and more. It is also able to handle external users, but that requires some serious thought to architecture etc. However Enterprise SharePoint is not cheap, nor is a SharePoint farm installation a minor exercise.
Having used SharePoint to do this, it is very powerful, but does not work well over SSL, so terminate your SSL at the F5 or other hardware.
For information on planning a SharePoint implementation, have a look at
Planning an architecture for SharePoint server 2010
also Extranet topologies for SharePoint 2010 Products
Running through the rather large amount of documentation here should give you a glimpse of what is involved in getting a SharePoint extranet working.