Chapter 10: Analysis Services

Overview

Since the release of SQL Server 7 and OLAP services, SQL Server has been the clear leader in the business intelligence (BI) market. SQL Server 7 and its successor SQL Server 2000 ushered BI from being a niche technology into the computing mainstream. Now BI is one of the hottest market segments in the IT world, and for good reason. One of the primary reasons behind the rapid growth of BI is the fact that it enables an organization to get more information and value from the information resources than before. This has become a vital factor over the past several years, as many companies have experienced IT belt-tightening in recent times. Doing more with the resources that you already have enables IT to provide increased strategic value to the business organization.

BI enables a business to get more meaningful information out of the operational data that it currently uses in its line of business applications. By taking the operational data from their order entry, shipping, and sales applications, OLAP, data warehousing, and data mining technologies enable businesses to accumulate and aggregate important pieces of information in ways that are not possible with pure relational data access techniques. The end result uncovers more meaningful information about your business and the important factors that influence it. There’s no free lunch, and BI is no exception to this rule. The road toward BI isn’t free—personnel and training issues as well as technology issues need to be addressed—but in the long run, the costs can be justified. Being able to get more meaningful information out of your operational data can help transform IT into a core strategic advantage for your business.

In the past year the term BI has grown beyond the traditional interpretation, where BI was essentially synonymous with OLAP. Now BI has broadened to include all technologies that enable the business to provide decision-making information. With SQL Server 2005, Microsoft has certainly adopted this broader definition of BI. BI has taken a major role in SQL Server 2005. More than just OLAP and analysis, BI includes other information tools such as Integration Services and Reporting Services. Chapters 8 and 9 covered the new features in Integration Services and Reporting Services in more detail. In this chapter you’ll get an overview of SQL Server 2005’s new Analysis Services features.

BI has been a huge emphasis in this release of SQL Server, and there are so many new features that an entire book could be devoted to explaining them all. In this chapter I’ll point out the most important new features in SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services. The first part of this chapter will provide a brief overview of OLAP and the role of Analysis Services. Next, you’ll see the most important new features found in the Analysis Services Engine and you’ll also get an introduction to Microsoft’s new Unified Dimensional Model. The section after that covers the new Analysis Services Management and Development features. Finally, this chapter will present the new data mining algorithms that Microsoft has added to Analysis Services.