Affording OLAP Tools

Typically, OLAP products can cost $50,000 to $100,000 for less than 50 users. Microsoft recognizes that OLAP is a natural extension of database technology and has included OLAP Services as a feature of SQL Server 7.0.

SQL Server 7.0 includes other complementary data warehousing features:

• Visual Database Tools, for creating database schemas
• Data Transformation Services (DTS), for extracting and transforming operational data into the data warehouse
• Microsoft Repository, for providing a unified metadata store built on SQL Server