Contour Components
Interactive Reporting and Data Analysis
About us
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Contour Components is a private, internationally operated company founded in 2004. The company is focused on research and development in Business Intelligence and provides an innovative “out-of-the-box” BI Platform for interactive reporting and data analysis. Contour BI customer base includes statistical agencies, governmental institutions, banks, and corporations. |
How to Show YTD, MTD and History Business Data
The Year dimension displays both the history and the last year. The last year is not finished for 364 days in a year, so the year subtotal shows “year-to-date” data. When you expand the last year you see months, including the last one, which shows “month-to-date” data.
Most managers, however, have grown accustomed to using a certain kind of traditional report and consequently demand the same even when they happen to be using the more sophisticated OLAP tool. This article describes how to use Contour BI to create multidimensional business reports, scorecards and dashboards that look like your traditional YTD, MTD and History tables.
Three reports
The first and easiest way to achieve our goal is to create three independent cubes. You use a single Query, like Sales, for all of them.
You start by creating a YTD cube containing a single Slice. Set the auto filter to the Year dimension to Show One Last Year. The Year dimension is located in the Columns area while other dimensions, such as Product, Facility, Market, Customer, or KPI, are located in the Rows area and create dynamic hierarchies that the user can drill down through.
You can then create the MTD cube similar to the YTD, duplicating the YTD cube with some minor modifications. Set the auto filter to the Month dimension to Show One Last Month. Move the Year dimension to the Filters area and Month to the Columns area.
Finally, you create your History cube, duplicating the YTD once more, and clearing all filters. You will then be able to see all of the years in the columns. If you want, you can add the Month dimension after Year to make the Year expandable into months.
All three reports can be published as separate buttons, or by combining them into the dashboard, so that your managers can see all the data on one screen, or by presentation, so that every report will be accessible in a tab.
One report
One cube loads three times faster than three cubes of the same size, and so it makes sense to create one report instead of three. In this case, it is possible to create three slices for the cube and one table for each slice.
A slice is a Contour BI object that stores the location, order, filters, and expand status of dimensions. One cube can contain a number of slices showing data from a certain angle. For each slice a number of visual components like a table, a chart or a map can be created. All react to filters synchronously.
By default, slices are isolated from each other, so visual components belonging to different slices are filtered asynchronously.
In our case, we probably need to let users set filters for all tables synchronously. For example, a user can choose a customer to see YTD, MTD or History of sales generated by the customer. To do this, you set Sync Filters for the cube to True. Now the dimensions in all of the slices are filtered together. Which means that you can set a filter in any table and have all of them filtered at once.
There's one catch, however: if all filters are working synchronously, the History table will not show properly because the YTD and MTD slices filter years by a single last value. Furthermore, the YTD table will not come out correctly because the MTD limits months to the single last value as well.
The solution is to exclude all date-based dimensions from the synchronous filtering. That can be done by setting the Sync Filter property to false for every date-based dimension in each slice.
After that the user will be able to safely filter any other dimensions, both manually and through corporate or user layouts.
Permissions
There's one last question to address: what if you use an advanced security policy that limits access to parts of data to various roles in one cube? Secure dimensions are of the first priority. This means that report authors and user manipulations with auto filters, and all corporate and user layouts are carried out on a sub-cube containing data pre-filtered by Secure dimensions to prevent access to non-permitted data.
Contour BI
Contour BI is an easy-to-use platform for interactive reporting, data analysis and report distribution. The Contour BI platform provides access to all corporate data sources, builds interactive reports with zero programming and publishes interactive reports to your local network and the web. Contour BI makes it possible to create a wide range of solutions
in various industries.
Benefits
Solutions are created fast |
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The highly productive graphical environment of Contour BI lets IT specialists and users create corporate reports quickly and easily. |
Advanced Data Analysis |
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Contour BI's various modes get all the information to the user quickly and clearly |
Easier Report Distribution |
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Contour BI easily updates and delivers reports to wherever users may be need them - at headquarters and office branches or on mobile devices |
Features
OLAP |
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Contour's super fast, powerful OLAP engine allows users to perform the full range of OLAP operations as well as providing original algorithms and tools, including:
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GIS integrated into BI |
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GIS integrated into BI changes everything. You can store spatial data and business data in the same OLAP cube, then filter your maps and figures together and watch how maps and numbers change as you go with:
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Publishing |
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With Contour BI you create reports once for all platforms. Users can open reports on their desktop, smartphone or tablet and reports are adapted for the current operating system and screen type.
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Rich visualization |
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Contour BI makes it possible to create the right look for your clear analytical reports with:
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Multi platform |
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Contour BI server and client modules are provided for different operating systems.
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Contour Reporter
Contour Reporter is business intelligence tool for data access, interactive reporting, and data analysis. With it, managers and specialists quickly receive business intelligence reports to improve corporate management: sales reports, customer lists, stocks, marketing, budget, accounting, and other statistical reports.
Contour Reporter is a report designer, an analytical tool, and also a “thick” client for the Contour BI Portal. It creates BI Projects and reports used by all Contour BI products.
Report authors use Contour Reporter to create reports in a visual environment and publish them for users in a local network or web. Analysts use Contour Reporter as a “thick” client for advanced data analysis. Users view reports created with Contour Reporter and published with Contour BI Portal in the web using only their browsers.
Benefits
New quality of reporting |
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The in-memory OLAP technology integrated into Contour Reporter lets users view data from different angles, instantly summarize and drill down into data, and apply any combination of filters, performing a rich visual analysis and thus achieving a faster, deeper understanding of information with which to make better decisions. |
BI+GIS in one product |
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Business Intelligence integrated with Geographic Information System has given birth to a new kind of analytics: geoanalytics. |
Self-service |
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Contour Reporter has a simple and friendly spreadsheet-like user interface. When working with reports, users can independently and in real-time obtain dozens of report variations with sub-second response times. Users can print and save reports in various formats: Microcube, MS Excel, MS Word, HTML, and email them to colleagues. Authors can easily publish their reports in Contour BI Portal for web users. |
Access to reports |
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Contour Reporter provides extremely convenient and flexible access to reports. Users can work with their local BI projects or connect to Contour BI Portal and open reports stored on the server. Each report can be stored on a computer or published anywhere in a form of Contour microcube – a file containing highly compressed data and all metadata. |
Features
All types of OLAP |
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Contour Reporter creates reports based on large amounts of data - millions of records - and does it very quickly. In order to ensure maximum performance optimization, Contour Reporter supports three OLAP technologies:
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Easy Report designing |
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Reports in Contour Reporter are created without programming, making a deep technical knowledge unnecessary. Smart tools and technologies implemented in the application help create reports quickly - in a matter of minutes. |
Various report types |
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Contour Reporter lets you build interactive OLAP reports, non-interactive HTML-reports, dashboards, presentations – set of reports. |
Rich Visualization |
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Reports include interactive tables decorated with images, conditional formatting, semaphores, a wide range of charts, grapths and gauges, multi-layer maps. |
Drill Through |
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Linked reports allow for the quick setup of a workplace for executives or leading specialists, gathering together connected reports that get information from the different informational systems within an organization. A report built from CRM data can immediately be integrated with a report containing data from ERP, and from there receive a report based on data entered in an Excel spreadsheet. |
Local and server mode |
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A user can work with his reports either locally without access to Internet or as a client of Contour BI Portal using projects and reports stored on a server and collaborating with colleges. |
Multi-platform |
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Versions for Windows, Mac OS and Linux are available. |
Contour Publisher
Contour Publisher is a script-based console tool that automates report updating and delivering. It automatically queries relational databases, creates or updates OLAP reports as Contour microcube, MS Excel, MS Word or HTML files, and delivers reports to users.
Contour Publisher can be run on-demand or in accordance with a predetermined schedule. Update scripts for Contour Publisher are composed in Contour Reporter.
Benefits
Cube processing automation |
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Automates the processing of cubes. Updates reports without hassle. |
Subscription and distribution |
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Delivers reports to subscribers in various formats: Contour microcube, PDF, HTML, MS Excel, MS Word. Delivers reports to various types of destinations: FTP, email, folders. |
Features
Multiply data sources |
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Supports a number of databases and dialects: Oracle, MS SQL, Postgress, MySQL, MS Access, Sybase, DB2, etc. Supports native and universal database connectivity: ODBC, ADO for Windows. |
Multiplatform |
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Supports Linux, Windows, 32 bit and 64 bit. |
Contour BI Portal
Benefits
Web-based Business Intelligence |
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Contour BI Portal provides users with highly interactive multidimensional analytical reports, scorecards and dashboards in their browsers, with no need for additional software. |
High Performance |
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Cube in-memory technology, efficient indexes and original terminal-like drawings of web pages make it possible for users to interact with large amounts of data at unheard of speeds. |
Zero coding analytical web sites |
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Contour BI Portal makes it possible to create analytical and statistical web sites or analytical sections of corporate web sites without an advanced knowledge of programming. |
Features
Thin client |
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Users view interactive reports in their browsers without the need to install additional software. Most popular browsers are supported. |
Mobile devices |
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The adaptive client allows users to view the same reports on desktops, tablets and smartphones. The GUI is changed automatically according to the screen properties. |
Web based BI |
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All interactive analytical features available in the thick clients are also available in the thin client including drill down, drill through, filtering, pivoting. |
Reports |
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Fixed, non-interactive reports include images, headers, tables, charts, and obtain data from relational databases and cubes. |
OLAP |
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Multidimensional interactive reports allow users to slice and dice, pivot and filter. |
Scorecards |
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Interactive scorecards for managers show target indicators and percentages in various rich visual forms. |
Dashboards |
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Dashboards integrates visual elements such as charts, gauges, grids from different reports and displays the currents status of metrics and KPI's. |
Catalogs |
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All permitted reports are shown to the user as a well-organized catalog in the form of a set of buttons or a hierarchical tree. Users can navigate through folders and reports, search reports by names, metadata and tags. |
Metadata |
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Each folder and report can contain metadata – a user-defined set of attributes describing reports, authors, data. |
Security |
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User authentication handles users, roles and permissions on projects, reports and data elements and operations on them. |
Single Sign On |
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CAS server, JASS and LDAP are supported, so that a user can sign on once and work with Contour BI Portal and other web applications of the organization. |
Collaboration |
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Contour BI Portal stores projects on a server and allows users to work on their reports together, create new projects, compose reports and publish them to a wide range of users. |
Integrability |
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Contour BI solution, project, report or any part of a report can easily be integrated into one or more web sites of an organization and any public sites. |
Solutions
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Contour BI creates analytical solutions for public organizations, statistical and sociological agencies, banks, and private enterprises. |
Statistics
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Contour BI modernizes statistics by making them more attractive and interactive. It speeds up the creation of solutions, at the same time making them more affordable, and all requiring minimal effort on the part of the user: |
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Banks
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Banks and financial organizations use Contour BI to create reports, dashboards, scorecards and BI portals. |
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Enterprises
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Contour BI is great for small, medium and large enterprises. There isn't an industry it can't be applied to for: |
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Government
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Contour BI is a Business Intelligence platform optimized for the public sector, publishing information on state sites in highly interactive and easy-to-read formats. Some solutions for governments include: |
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