What are the alternatives to SQL Server Analysis Services?

Question

Are there any alternatives to SQL Server Analysis Services on the Windows x64 platform? I'm vaguely curious, because I haven't heard of any (though admittedly I haven't looked very hard).

Basically, a product that allows multi-dimensional cubes and querying those to generate reports (though the generation and presentation of those reports is a separate concern).

I'm not too familiar with the terms used by this set of products; is "column-oriented database" what I'm after?

Update: I'm interested in open-source products as well as commercial ones.

Answer 1

The question is, why and what for do you want an alternative? for the database or the data mining?

Jasperanalysis from Jaspersoft is an open source reporting alternative; for the database you could use for example Big Table from Google.

Column (or row) oriented is the way the database stores the data. What you do with the data is called OLAP. Column oriented databases are faster in the aggregation of data, that's why they should be preferred to do OLAP.

Answer 2

From what you are saying, you probably need an OLAP engine to get multidimensional analysis. The main players in OLAP systems that I know are:

• SAS BI
• Oracle BI
• SAP BW
• SSAS

The SAS BI will work on 64-bit platform. (EDIT: BUT NOT ON WINDOWS 2008. SORRY)

Some of them are separated from the underlaying database engine (for example can work with MS SQL, Oracle, DB2 or Terradata).