Strong .NET analytics helps to develop effective business intelligence applications

An important pre-requisite for developing sophisticated business intelligence applications on Microsoft Silverlight, Windows Forms and ASP.NET is some sort of a .NET analytics component (or framework) that works with multidimensional data and has these key capabilities:

- Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) capabilities
- Data visualization that works with multidimensional data
- Built-in support for commonly used analytics operations

Let’s briefly look at each one of these to better understand how GrapeCity ActiveAnalysis meets these requirements.

The ActiveAnalysis pivot view supports OLAP from the ground-up

OLAP is best described as a technique (or a way) to get fast answers to multidimensional data queries. The ActiveAnalysis pivot view uses these OLAP compatible features:

- An OLAP compatible pivot grid that handles OLAP data
- Support for multidimensional expressions (MDX) and local cubes as data sources
- Data cards or data panes that help design the multidimensional data view
- Data shelfs to host measures and dimensions for the pivot view

Also see ActiveAnalysis as a .NET/Silverlight OLAP client for Microsoft Analysis Services (SSAS).

ActiveAnalysis data visualization works with multidimensional data

ActiveAnalysis comes with built-in charts and data visualization features that are designed for multidimensional data from the ground up. They include:

- Flexible Charting options and the ability to instantly switch between text views and chart views
- Visually differentiating multiple data elements in the same view
- Creating multiple views (business dashboards) for the same data
- Plotting trend lines in both discrete and continuous modes
- Animating timeline graphs to uncover hidden trends in data
- Ability to select individual data points for more analysis
- Drag and drop user interface for maximum ease of use

ActiveAnalysis implements commonly used analytics tasks

ActiveAnalysis has built-in support for common analytics tasks that include:

- Quickly filtering data with pre-defined filters
- Drilling down and up the data
- Performing top down and bottom up analysis
- Displaying summary and aggregate information
- Ranking and sorting data
- Undoing changes made to the analysis view
- Exporting to Microsoft Excel for offline sharing
- Printing and sharing of analysis results

Conclusion

GrapeCity ActiveAnalysis provides everything you need from a Microsoft Silverlight, Windows Forms and ASP.NET analytics component to help you develop complete business intelligence solutions with business dashboards, database analytics and more, with very little effort.