Extremely slow Excel MDX

Using Excel as a client is most of the time exceedingly slow. For example writing a simple query of the type:

SELECT [Measures].[Some Measure] ON 0,
[Product].[Product-Version].[Product] ON 1
FROM [Cubename]

in Management studio is in Excel transformed to:

SELECT NON EMPTY HIERARCHIZE(AddCalculatedMembers({DrillDownLevel({[Product].[Product-Version].[All]})})) DIMENSION PROPERTIES PARENT_UNIQUE_NAME ON COLUMNS FROM [Cubename] WHERE ([Measures].[Some Measure])

which takes several times longer to execute. As one starts drilling down it becomes increasingly worse with excel producing MDX that takes 100:s of times longer to execute then if I handwrite the mdx. This is with a very simple cube where Some Measure is not a calculated member. I can't even begin to imagine how slow it would be with a more complex cube. Is there anything to be done about this, any guidelines to follow to make it easer for Excel to generate "normal" mdx?

I had similar problem with Excel and OWC when accessing OLAP Cubes. Unfortunately, unless you optimize your cube, there is nothing can be done with how Excel generate mdx to retrieve data. Excel and OWC is closed code, and recently Microsoft announced that they will be stopping new releases for OWC. Howerver, Excel PivotTable has new version, take a look at Office 2007 in Beta version. It generates more efficient MDXs compared to Office 2003/2000.

Downside, it will take another 2-3 years for Office 2007 to be as popular as Office 2003, so, distribution of your solution in Office 2007 might be an issue if u decide to switch to Office 2007 in larger scale enterprise.

|||Thanks. Is there anything special you have in mind when you say "unless you optimize your cube"? Or do you mean the "ordinary" optimizations one does to make the server work decently fast? I will try to have a look at the 2007 beta though.|||

As mentioned earlier, you can take a look at Office 2007 sending bit different MDX queries. You also take a look at the ProClarity recently aquired by Microsoft see if you get better performance using it.

Also make sure you install latest service pack - SP1. There has been some performance improvements in it. You will see event more performance improvements in upcoming service pack 2. Watch for announcements of Community Technology Preview (CTP) to get your hands on upcoming SP2.

Edward.
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