Microsoft Analysis Services
SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services (SSAS) provides, for the first
time, a unified and integrated view of all your business data as
the foundation for all of your traditional reporting, online
analytical processing (OLAP) analysis, Key Performance Indicator
(KPI) scorecards, and data mining.
Unified Dimensional Model
Analysis Services provides a business semantic model, referred
to as the Unified Dimensional Model (UDM), that defines business
entities, business logic, calculations, and metrics. The UDM is a
central place that serves as the single version of truth for all
reports, spreadsheets, OLAP browsers, KPIs, and analytical
applications.
Using the powerful new data source view feature, the UDM is
mapped to a host of heterogeneous back-end data sources, providing
a complete and integrated picture of the business regardless of the
location of the data. With friendly descriptions of the business
entities, navigation hierarchies, multiple perspectives, and even
automatic translations to native languages, users will find it easy
to explore corporate business data.
Proactive Caching
Proactive caching enables the combination of real-time updates
with multidimensional online analytical processing (MOLAP) class
performance. Analysis Services maintains a highly compressed and
optimized data cache that is maintained automatically as the data
in the underlying source databases changes. The cache provides
superb query performance and isolates back-end source systems from
the load of the analytical queries.
Advanced Business Intelligence
The KPI framework provides a rich centralized repository
defining key metrics and scorecards. With the KPI framework in
Analysis Services, you can easily build balanced scorecards and
other types of business performance management applications.
- Translations. Translations provide a simple
and centrally managed mechanism for storing and presenting analytic
data to users in their preferred languages.
- MDX Scripts. Multidimensional Expressions
(MDX) scripts are the new mechanism for defining calculated
members, named sets, and cell calculations.
- Business Intelligence Wizards. A set of
easy-to-use wizards can help even the most novice user model some
of the more complex business intelligence problems.
- Semiadditive Measures. This new measure
aggregation type for advanced data modeling includes last-nonempty,
last-child, first-child, average-of-children, and even
by-account-type.
- Data Mining. Analysis Services provides tools
for data mining with which you can identify rules and patterns in
your data, so that you can determine why things happen and predict
what will happen in the future—giving you powerful insight that
will help your company make better business decisions.
Web Services
XML for Analysis (XML/A) is the native, standards-based protocol
for communication with an Analysis Services server. New kinds of
applications are now possible and easy to develop—applications that
integrate analytics with operations in real time and that can
access data from any platform and any language.
Enterprise Capabilities
SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services sets a new standard for
business intelligence servers in enterprise scalability,
manageability, and productivity.
- Scalability. Analysis Services scales to the
most demanding analytical and reporting applications. With a new
dimensional architecture, UDM-enabled applications let users
quickly perform rich and intuitive ad-hoc analysis using hundreds
of dimensions and hierarchies. Hierarchies make it easier for users
to navigate and query UDMs with hundreds of millions of
members.
In addition, the new architecture removes the limitations of
memory–resident dimensions and the number of children members per
parent. With an XML⁄A–based communication protocol that is paired
with greatly optimized role–based security, Analysis Services helps
a UDM handle thousands of users, enabling enterprise-scale business
intelligence applications using Web⁄middle-tier or client-server
architectures.
- Manageability. Because the management tools
for the relational engine and Analysis Services are integrated,
business intelligence administrators benefit from having a single,
uniform environment for managing SQL Server Analysis Services. With
SQL Server Management Studio, administrators can easily script
Analysis Services objects and operations or tasks. Administrators
can use a rich editor for MDX and Data Mining eXtensions (DMX)
queries. SQL Profiler can be used to trace, capture, and replay
Analysis Services queries and other commands. Multi-instancing,
enhanced backup and restore, synchronization of databases across
servers, and improved fine-grained administrative permissions are
some of the new manageability tools.
- Productivity. Integrated with Visual Studio,
the intuitive Analysis Services wizards and editors provide a true
application development environment, supporting the project's full
life cycle. Source control, versioning, workstation isolation,
embedded debugging, and configuration management are some of the
benefits of the new Business Intelligence Development Studio.