9/30/2014

Analyzing Money

print | close

Analyzing Money
SQL Server Pro
Russ Whitney

Russ Whitney
Mon, 06/16/2003 - 11:00pm

Using your own OLAP solution makes you a better developer

Most analysis solutions I work on contain other people's data, and I maintain a professional distance from
the confidential details that data might re
veal. If youre a DBA or developer, youre probably in a similar
situation. But you gain more insight about OLAP when you analyze data that means something to you
personally. My first meaningful experience with OLAP came when a friend sent me a cube containing 13
years of college football data. The cube contained all the teams and their win and loss statistics in different
playing situations. I spent a couple of hours intently pivoting, drill
ing down, charting, and creating custom
measures, and I found some interesting trends in the data. For ex
ample, some college teams are more likely
to win on the road than at their home stadiums.
One way you can set up a cube that has personal meaning is to put your Microsoft Money data into an
OLAP cube to explore. If you dont track your finances in Moneyor if looking at your finances would be
too depressingyou might still find this example valuable because it demonstrates all the steps involved in
constructing a cube. You can download a trial version of Money from the Microsoft Web site and
experiment with the Money sample file. I haven't tried to extract data from another application such as
Intuit Quicken, but Im sure if you use one, you can find a similar technique to extract data and build a
cube. I think you'll find that being a user of one of your own cubes will help you create better analysis
solutions. To build a cube, you need to get the data out of the application (in this case, Money) and into a
table format (I chose Microsoft Access), then de
sign a cube in Analysis Manager and pro
cess the cube (load
the data from the table format into the cube).

Extracting the Data

The first hurdle was to get the data out of Money. The task seemed trivial at first, but the process wasn't ob
vious. I use Money 2003 Deluxe, and the only export option I found created a Quicken Import Format
(QIF) file containing the data from only one account. This data would be usable, but exporting the data
from each of my accounts (e.g., check
ing, credit cards, savings, investment, IRA) individually would be a
tedious process. Plus, QIF isn't particularly database friendly; every field is on a different line, and the fields
are wrapped in punctuation marks. I'd need some time to develop a script or small application to mas
sage
the QIF data into a for
mat that I could easily load into a database table. Then, I discovered that I could
generate a report in Money and export the report data to a comma-delimited format (CSV) file. That was
definitely the ticket because the applications I wanted to useMicrosoft Excel, Access, and Analysis
Managercan readily access CSV files.
My goal was to export all the individual transactions (such as a check or a credit-card charge) but ignore
inter
account transfers (such as a payment from checking to my credit card). I didnt want these transactions
be
cause I wanted to limit my analysis to my true expenses and income. I discovered a way to achieve this
http://sqlmag.com/print/analysis/analyzing-money

1/3

9/30/2014

Analyzing Money

limited focus by creating what Money calls a "Transactions by Category" report. After I generated this
report, I chose the Customize option and changed a few settings. On the Rows & Columns tab, I checked the
boxes to include all fields, I set subtotaling to None, and I selected the Show Splits box. These settings gave
me the maximum amount of detailed transaction data. Next, I flipped to the Category tab and clicked Select
All, then cleared the Include Transfers box to include all the data except the inter
account transfers. Next, I
flipped to the Date tab and typed the date range of the transactions I wanted to export: 1/1/2002 to the
current date. (If youre using the Money sample file, you should choose 1/1/2000 to 1/1/2002.) Finally, I
clicked OK and saw the report containing all the data I wanted to export.
When youve generated your report, youll see on the left side of the report under the heading Other Tasks
the option Export to Microsoft Excel. This option generates a CSV file, launches Excel, and opens a spread
sheet that contains your exported data. Click the Export to Microsoft Excel op
tion, and type the name of the
CSV file (I chose Sample .csv). After you select the filename and click OK, youll see your data in Excel.
Now comes the fun part. Any experienced DBA knows that data is never in the right format for a direct
import. When you in
spect the Money data, youll see some problems. A blank line separates the
transactions, the Memo field in investment transactions contains multiple pieces of information, the
category field contains both the category and subcategory, and split transactions are a mess. You have to
create a script or use an extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) tool to fix all these problems. Every
DBA has a favorite ETL tool, but I simply used Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) in Excel. I created a VBA
macro that steps through Excel and reformats the data so that Ican import it into Access and, from there,
build my cube. For more information about the macro I cre
ated, see Money Macro.
If you have an OLE DB driver that reads Excel documents, you could go directly from this step to designing
and processing the cube. I didnt have the necessary driver, so I first loaded the Excel data from Sample.xls
(the Excel version of Sample.csv) into an Ac
cess table. To do this, start Access and choose File, New, Blank
Database. Pick a filename such as MSMoneySample.mdb. From the File menu, select Get External Data,
Import. Select Sample.xls, and Access will show you the Import Spreadsheet Wiz
ard. In the wiz
ard, you
need to make a few changes. On the wizards first page, select the First Row Contains Column Headings
option. In the first column of the third page, change the field option called Indexed to No. Finally, click
Finish, and close Access.

Creating the Cube

Now you have the data in a format that you can load into a cube. Launch Analysis Manager to start the
cube-creation process. Table 1 shows the dimension structure I chose for the Money cube. In addition to the
dimensions that Table 1 shows, I considered making a dimension out of the Reconciled column, but I
couldnt determine any value in analyz
ing reconciled transactions versus unreconciled transactions.
I wont bore you with all the steps that Analysis Manager takes to create the cube, but Ill give you a couple
of hints that might help if you havent created a cube before. First, right-click the Analysis Server you want
to use, and choose New Database to create a database. Next, right-click the Data Sources folder in your new
database, and select New Data Source. In this step, you can choose the Microsoft Jet 4.0 OLE DB driver if
you have the data in Access, as I did. Finally, right-click the Cubes folder, and select New Cube, Wizard to
step through the process of creating your dimensions and measures.
After youve defined your dimensions and measures, I suggest making two changes from the defaults in the
cube editor. First, format the Amount measure as currency, and second, enable drillthrough. You can
change the display format of a measure by selecting the measure in the cube editor, displaying the
properties, and flipping to the Advanced tab of the properties. Youll see a property labeled Display Format
http://sqlmag.com/print/analysis/analyzing-money

2/3

9/30/2014

Analyzing Money

that has a combo box of choices. You can also enable drillthrough from the cube editor. From the Tools
menu, select Drillthrough Options. In the Cube Drillthrough Options dialog box, click Enable Drillthrough,
and select the columns you want your OLAP front-end application to display when you drill through a cell
of the cube. (I recommend select
ing all the columns.)
Drillthrough lets you see individual trans
actions that make up cell values in the cube. For example, say your
money-management application says you spent $1543.21 on din
ing out in March, and you cant believe it.
Drill
through lets you see ex
actly which transactions you, your spouse, or someone else in the family entered
in the Dining Out category for March.
If youre like me, every chart or grid of numbers you see thats based on the Money data will answer one
question and prompt you to ask two more. If you have a good OLAP front-end tool, you can quickly
navigate the data by pivoting in and out of di
mensions. Drill down or up, and youll learn things about your
finances that you never knew before. You could learn these things by running reports in Money, but
analyzing the re
ports would take you a long time, and you mightgiveup beforeyou got any information.

Using What You've Learned

The approach I used to build a cube from my Money data reveals problems you might en
counter when
sourcing data for any anal
ysis application. For example, you need to be sure to explore the source system's
reporting capabilities as an option for ex
tracting data. As I discovered in Money, you might find the results
that the reporting capability re
turns to be closer to the data for
mat you want. Also, the technique I used in
Excel to massage the data is an example of how to be creative in fixing data-quality or format problems
when you're performing ETL of your source data.
Besides learning about your finances and becoming more financially responsible (yeah, right), you can reap
another benefit when you browse data thats meaningful to you: You learn what its like to be a user of your
own analytic application. This experience will make you better at your job of creating analysis solutions for
other people. For ex
ample, after you browse your own data for about 5 seconds, youll realize that drill
through isn't optional. You'll no longer take a number at face value; instead, you'll want to see what factors
created that number and whether it's legitimate. I hope you enjoy going through this exercise as much as I
enjoyed creating it!
Source URL: http://sqlmag.com/analysis/analyzing-money

http://sqlmag.com/print/analysis/analyzing-money

3/3