Hyperion On XMLA vs. JOLAP

Interesting article from Hyperion on JOLAP and XMLA. Hyperion of course have a foot in both camps (see this article by Seth Grimes, and my previous summary of the XMLA vs. JOLAP situation) and this article sets out their position on how the two competing APIs fit together.

According to the article;

"Hyperion views JOLAP and XMLA as complementary rather than competing standards. Although you can implement XMLA without using JOLAP, the JOLAP specification supports the web services architecture that depends on J2EE application servers, XML, and SOAP messages.

In fact, Hyperion s implementation of XMLA uses our Java API (which was developed based on our JOLAP specification work) to communicate with the Essbase Analytic Services (OLAP Server). Our XMLA web service accepts a SOAP message, takes the mdXML statement contained in the SOAP message, and passes it to the Analytic Services engine for processing through the Java API. The result set is passed back to the XMLA web service through the Java API, where it is wrapped in a SOAP message and sent to the requesting client.

We believe the misconception around them being competitive is the result of the similarity/overlap of the functionality and benefits of the standards. In addition, the fact that Microsoft is only supporting XMLA and Oracle is only supporting JOLAP (and calling XMLA a Microsoft proprietary initiative) adds fuel to the competing standards confusion."