Creating OLAP Style Applications with SalesForce / Apex

Question

We plan to move the planning and budgeting application to the Salesforce platform. The existing application is built on a dimensional data model and has ample ad-hoc request capabilities implemented by combining stars.

We see how the platform will allow us to quickly collect data entry screens, but the underlying data and query languages ​​are not suitable for our reporting requirements.

Is it possible to have fast and flexible reporting with this platform? If not, how cumbersome is extracting data on a regular basis to bring it to the analytic application?

Answer 1

Hmm ... I think I'm answering my question? The relative silence of this (even with generosity - who wants to have anything to do with something that is ignored in stackoverflow?) Is a kind of answer.

So - No, this platform is not very suitable for applications that have any ROLAP requirements. I’m probably ashamed of me asking a stupid question, but I welcome any answers ...

Answer 2

Fulfilling your own, fast OLAP-like queries: possible, but somewhat cumbersome, since SFDC is basically a traditional-style RDBMS, with some limited pooling capabilities in its own reporting. You can do OLAP-like things with special code, but it can become cumbersome if you are used to using installed high-level OLAP solutions.

Extracting data from SFDC for use in other applications: very simple and supported by many technologies, the most common is the extraction of CSV files or the use of a web data service. There are tools such as the SFDC data loader, which also allows you to retrieve / load data through the command line or user interface. This is probably what I would recommend to a client who already has experience with this analysis tool.

Answer 3

I would not try to create an OLAP data model in salesforce. Constraints both for associations and for collapsing data from children to parents make it difficult to implement a stellar aggregation scheme.

There are several products, such as IQ 20/20 , that can integrate with salesforce and provide business intelligence functionality in near real time.

Snapshots can also help, as they provide a way to create pivot tables. Snapshots extract data from the report and can be periodically scheduled. Different releases of Salesforce provide different planning functions, so it’s best to check the limits for your version before going too far into the design.