The Microsoft Dynamics AX application provides hundreds of standard reports. In addition, Microsoft Dynamics AX leverages SQL Server Reporting Services and SQL Server Analysis Services to provide two different types of reporting capabilities, ad hoc reports and production reports. This topic provides a high-level overview of the integration of the Microsoft Dynamics AX application with Analysis Services. For information about integration with Reporting Services, see Reporting extensions and reporting tools.

Introduction to Analysis extensions

To enable the Enterprise Portal role center business analytics, you must install the Analysis extensions. When you install the analysis extensions, a default OLAP database and cubes are deployed to Analysis Services. For step-by-step instructions on how to install the analysis extensions, see the Installation Guide.

Creating OLAP cubes with the business intelligence framework

The business intelligence (BI) framework enables developers to build Analysis Services cubes for Microsoft Dynamics AX.

Different roles in the organization can utilize the BI framework as follows:

  • The developer creates perspectives in the Application Object Tree (AOT) that contain tables that they wish to include in their cubes. The developer can then set properties on the tables and fields to specify the dimension attributes and measures that should be created.

  • A developer uses the Microsoft Dynamics AX application to generate an Analysis Services project using the Generate BI Projectform. The BI framework then inspects the perspectives and creates data source views (DSVs), cubes, and dimensions based on the perspectives. It also automatically creates application logic in the cube specific to such as slicing data by different companies and localization of the cubes for different languages.

  • A developer can then customize the Analysis Services project using the Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) to:

    • Add additional calculated measures and key performance indicators (KPIs).

    • Define security for the cubes.

    • Deploy the cubes to a SSAS Server.

  • The administrator processes the cubes using the SQL Server Management Studio.

  • Users can access the cubes to view analytical data through a variety of applications including Microsoft Excel and production reports.

See Also