Security and Authentication

You can restrict access to data managed by Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000 Analysis Services. You can limit the administrators that are permitted to access Analysis Services data through Analysis Manager and perform administrative functions. You can also restrict end users who access data on the Analysis server through client applications. You can specify which end users can access data and the types of operations they can perform. In addition, you can control end-user access at various levels of Analysis Services data, including the cube, dimension, and cube cell.

Administrator security is controlled using the Microsoft Windows NT® 4.0 or Windows® 2000 group named OLAP Administrators.

End-user security is controlled using:

• Authentication during connection to the Analysis server.
  
  
• Database, cube, and mining model roles defined in Analysis Manager.

Each role defines a set of users and the access they all share. A role is defined at the Analysis Services database level and then assigned to cubes that the users in the role are permitted to access. After assignment some changes are permitted to the role at the cube level. These changes do not affect the role at the database level. (An exception is a change to the users and groups in the cube role.) Thus, a role can have a different definition for each cube to which it is assigned.

Analysis Services supports Windows integrated security system.

The following topics describe security in more detail.