Tool - SSAS Documentation With Squarehouse Commentary

Reposted from Chris Webb's blog with the author's permission.

A few months ago I found out about a new tool for managing and viewing Analysis Services Multidimensional documentation called Squarehouse Commentary. I’ve now had the chance to play around with it and talk to the company that makes it and I have to say I’m impressed: in my opinion it’s by far the best tool of its type that I’ve seen. Rather than generating a large pile of documentation that no-one will read and which will get left, forgotten on a fileshare or a SharePoint site, it allows you to synch the descriptions created in its own web application with the description properties in your SSAS cubes and dimensions. It also automatically generates actions so that end users can easily view rich web-based documentation for hierarchies and measures direct from whatever client tool they are using in a few clicks.

This video does a good job of showing off the main features:

Overall, definitely something to check out. It doesn’t support Tabular models yet, but I’m told that this is in the planning stages.

Chris has been working with Microsoft BI tools since he started using beta 3 of OLAP Services back in the late 90s. Since then he has worked with Analysis Services in a number of roles (including three years spent with Microsoft Consulting Services) and he is now an independent consultant specialising in complex MDX, Analysis Services cube design and Analysis Services query performance problems. His company website can be found at http://www.crossjoin.co.uk and his blog can be found at http://cwebbbi.wordpress.com/ .