Building OLAP style applications with SalesForce/Apex

Question

We are considering moving a planning and budgeting app to the Salesforce platform. The existing app is built on a dimensional data model, and has extensive ad-hoc query capability implemented through star joins.

We see how the platform will allow us to put together the data entry screens quickly, but the underlying datamodel and query languages do not seem suitable for our reporting requirements.

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

Answer 1

Hmm - I guess I answer my own question? The relative silence on this (even with bounty- who wants to have anything to do with something that is ignored on stackoverflow?) is a kind of answer.

So - No, this platform is not well suited for applications that have any kind of ROLAP requirements. I guess shame on me for asking a silly question, but I welcome any responses...

Answer 2

Doing native, fast, OLAP-like queries: possible, but somewhat cumbersome since SFDC is basically a traditional-style RDBMS with somewhat limited joining capability within its native reporting. You can do OLAP-like things with custom code but it can get cumbersome if you are used to using established high-end OLAP solutions.

Extracting data from SFDC to use in other applications: really easy and supported across a number of technologies, the most common is extracting CSV files or using the data web service. There are tools like the SFDC data loader which also let you extract/load data via command line or UI. That's probably what I would recommend to a client who has pre-existing expertise in a given analysis tool.

Answer 3

I would not attempt to build an OLAP data model in salesforce. The limitations in both the joins and roll-up of data from child to parent make it difficult to implement a star schema with aggregations.

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

Analytical snapshots can also help as they provide a way to build aggregate tables. The snapshots pull data from a report and can be scheduled to run periodically. The different salesforce editions give different features regarding the scheduling so it is best to check the limits for your edition before going too far into the design.