Does anyone have insight into how painful it is for non-technical people to query their data warehouses?
Depends. Back when I did DW stuff my general workflow was to speak with the analysts about what they were trying to accomplish. From there I would create the cubes and additional metrics. I would also set up all the processing schedules at this time. The analysts would then use an Excel plugin that provided a pivot table interface to any cubes for which they had access. It worked pretty well.
For straight data access I would teach the them basic sql and/or build sql templates for them that they could extend.
My goal was always teach a man to fish and get out of the way.
Depends. Back when I did DW stuff my general workflow was to speak with the analysts about what they were trying to accomplish. From there I would create the cubes and additional metrics. I would also set up all the processing schedules at this time. The analysts would then use an Excel plugin that provided a pivot table interface to any cubes for which they had access. It worked pretty well.
For straight data access I would teach the them basic sql and/or build sql templates for them that they could extend.
My goal was always teach a man to fish and get out of the way.