For years, the most popular third-party tool for browsing cubes was ProClarity.
ProClarity Corporation created a thick, desktop client called ProClarity Professional,
as well as a web-based tool they called ProClarity Analytics Server, or PAS. PAS
included a thin client for browsing cubes called ProClarity standard, and it mimicked
most, but not all, of the functionality found in ProClarity Professional. With
Microsoft??™s acquisition of ProClarity in 2006, the groundwork was laid to merge the
strong analytic tools from ProClarity with some of Microsoft??™s tools, including the
Business Scorecard Manager. The merger of these tools, as well as the addition of a
planning piece, has led to PerformancePoint Server.
Analytic applications such as ProClarity are designed for analysts who need to
perform complex analysis on data. This doesn??™t mean that such tools are limited
only to analysts??”I??™ve have taught numerous ProClarity classes to end users over the
years. However, these tools are more specialized than standard reports and therefore
don??™t have the same broad reach. They are designed primarily for someone who
C h a p t e r 1 : T h e C a s e f o r B u s i n e s s I n t e l l i g e n c e 15
wants to work with the data without restrictions and follow any train of thought
through iterative analysis of the data.
Many of these tools also include advanced visualizations in the form of different
graph and chart types. Figure 1-4 shows an example of some of ProClarity??™s
advanced views of the data and how they can be used to quickly identify problem
areas, outliers, and so forth.
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