Cube Data Dictionary

hello all:

I am a technical writer and recently joined a pension fund company. My role in their is to rewrite the data dictionary in a format that will be very useful to non-technical users and exceutives.

Brief History:
The data is rolled up in a cube and the users access the cube through excel. But most of the users don't know
the data definitions and therefore are unable to analyze the data. The data dictionary does exist and right now is in a crude excel format (which no one likes to navigate through).

Question:
How can I present data in a clear manner that the non-technical end user can understand and doesn't have to go to developers to run their query.

Thanks for your time.
AnuSh

Hi Anush,

If your cube is SSAS and you have/can get SSRS, you could try this solution for exposing the cube's metadata in SSRS.

http://www.purplefrogsystems.com/blog/2010/09/olap-cube-documentation-in-ssrs-part-1/

This solution is limited to a single Description field for each object, and those Descriptions would probably need to be entered & maintained by your SSAS developer using Visual Studio.

On the plus side, you could get a solution showing the complete SSAS structure out to your users in a few hours.

If your cube client tool supports Cube Actions (e.g. Excel 2007+), and you can add the ASSP solution to your SSAS server, you can hook up Actions so a cube user can access the Descriptions directly from the cube. Here's a blog describing that:

http://www.artisconsulting.com/blogs/greggalloway/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=17

You can even combine the two solutions, by making the Action Expression dynamic and pointing at the SSRS report, passing the object name as a parameter.

Good luck!
Mike