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Some time ago I gave a copy of an Excel add-in to an actuary I knew; I
fully expected him to be delighted with the product.
However, he came back to me complaining that it was "too slow".
I hadn't experienced any speed problems myself, so I was surprised.
That is until I saw the spreadsheets he was working with.
He had thousands of cells being populated & quite a few spreadsheets open.
The Excel add-in in question was XLCubed.
This was version 1 which was entirely formula driven (i.e. every cell was an MDX
query).
This experience, along with others, spurred them into action to create a faster
version 2, the first part of which has been released as "Explorer".
I have now put Explorer to the test alongside it two main rivals.
These are the results:
| |
XLCubed |
IntelligentApps |
MIS Plain |
| Query 1 (c.100k cells) |
2.2 sec.'s |
19.6 sec.'s |
8.8 sec.'s |
| Query 2 (c. 1 million cells) |
13.6 sec.'s |
228 sec.'s |
49 sec.'s |
Of course most users will not be running such queries & in everyday
scenarios I haven't found time to be a big problem.
Functionality, ease of report creation & ease of use are just as important.
If you wish to repeat these tests yourself here are the details:
Query 1: Foodmart Sales cube - columns: Time.1997 & its descendents,
Measures.Sales Count; rows: Customer.Name
Query 2: Foodmart Sales cube - columns: Customer.City, Gender.Gender,
Measures.Sales Count; rows: Product.Name, Time.Quarter
Spec. Pentium 4 (2.39Ghz), 256 RAM, Windows XP, Office 2000, local cube on
PC.
XLCubed Explorer Beta
IntelligentApps (3.5.28) Data-Driven Report (It's Pivot Table returned the wrong
query; it returned only one row "USA" & this took 85 sec.'s for
Query 1)
MIS Plain (1.2)
For all products I turned off as many options as I could.
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