Excel and OLAP: ODBC vs. MDX

A question that I often get is "what is the difference between using ODBC and the MDX Provider for Oracle OLAP (from Simba Technologies) to query Oracle cubes"? Given that the Oracle cube is easily queried with SQL, it's a reasonable question.
The answer really boils down to leveraging meta data and automatic query generation.
With ODBC, it's up to the Excel user to write a SQL query to fetch data from the cube. Data can be returned in tabular format or a pivot table. When the data is viewed in a pivot table Excel will aggregate data, sometimes with unexpected results. For example Excel might choose to aggregate a measure such as Sales with COUNT or might try to SUM a measure such as Sales YTD Percent Change. Neither make any sense. It's up to the user to get it right.
With the MDX Provider, Excel understands what all the columns mean. It understands dimensions, hierarchies and levels. It's understand the difference between a key and a label. It knows what a measure is. It allows the server to calculate the data. Query generation is automatic. Business users just choose hierarchies and measures and the MDX Provider does the rest.
Here's a list of some of the advantages of using the MDX Provider for Oracle OLAP as compared to using ODBC and writing your own SQL.