Tableau and Essbase – A Match Made Perfect By ExoInsight

There is one area that Tableau and almost all other visualization tools have struggled to seamlessly adopt: OLAP data. Data stored in OLAP cubes such as Oracle Essbase is often difficult to work with in a reporting tool built primarily to handle relational data. OLAP data sources are almost always proprietary and built for speedy access from a native interface. Enabling OLAP data in a reporting tool such as Tableau is like putting a square peg in a round hole.

ExoInsight eliminates this challenge by presenting your Essbase data and metadata in a relational format, instantly and on-the-fly, unlocking it for downstream reporting tools such as Tableau. The challenges with Tableau’s built-in Oracle Essbase connector are well documented, not because the connector doesn’t do the job advertised, but because of the inherent discrepancies between OLAP and relational data. Tableau’s internal engine prefers data in row-and-column format, and this concept simply doesn’t apply to OLAP sources such as Oracle Essbase.

Enter ExoInsight. Instead of struggling to get your Oracle Essbase data in a format that Tableau prefers, ExoInsight does all this heavy lifting for you, formatting your Essbase data in such a way that makes it easy to work with.

Full article here.