Simba Technologies will be demonstrating native Microsoft Excel 2007 connectivity to Oracle OLAP 11g at the BIWA Summit at Oracle World Headquarters on December 2, 3, 2008.  Excel 2007 connectivity for Oracle, built using Simba’s MDX 2005 Query Language technology provides functionality that is the same as native Excel connectivity to Microsoft Analysis Services.  So, those of you that currently load data from Oracle into Analysis Services just so that you can build pivot tables against that data now have a much simpler choice–keep the data in Oracle, and use Simba’s solution to natively access the data in Oracle OLAP using Excel directly.  Simba’s solution natively accesses the data from Excel instead of relying on an add-in to make the connection.  In effect, Excel doesn’t even know that the data is coming from Oracle OLAP; as far as it’s concerned, it is getting the data from a MDX source, the same path it uses to get data from Microsoft Analytic Services.  This raises an interesting possibilty for those using MS Analytic Services–switch to Oracle OLAP and don’t even bother telling any Excel application that relies on the data.  Click here to view Simba’s full press release.

This also solves the problem for those waiting for Oracle to certify Oracle’s BI Spreadsheet Addin against Oracle OLAP 11g or Excel 2007.  These people can now use Simba’s technology for those situations.

I expect to have a demonstration of this soon that I can show to people.  Please email me at dvlamis[at]vlamis[dot]com if you’re interested in more on this.

By the way, given that I’m the conference chair for BIWA Summit 2008, I’ve been remiss in not posting more on the Summit.  This is THE event devoted to Oracle-based Business Intelligence, Warehousing and Analytics.  Get more information at http://www.oraclebiwa.org/.  You can still join us for the conference and see this technology for yourself in Amyn Rajan’s session.  Rumor has it that George Spofford, author of MDX Solutions: With Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services 2005 and Hyperion Essbase will be in the session, so bring your MDX questions along.  See you there!