Using Decision Support Objects

You can use Decision Support Objects (DSO) in your applications to administer the server and to create and maintain OLAP and data mining objects. DSO objects can also be created and used to incorporate the server functions of Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000 Analysis Services into client applications. For information about the programming environments in which you can use DSO to create such client applications, see Development Environments.

A common sequence of operations for an application using DSO is:

1. Connect to an Analysis server.
   
   
2. Create a database object to contain dimensions and cubes.
   
   
3. Add a data source that contains the data.
   
   
4. Create dimensions and their levels.
   
   
5. Create a cube and specify dimensions and measures.
   
   
6. Process a cube to load its structure and data.

These operations are described and illustrated using Microsoft Visual Basic®, Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition, and Microsoft Visual C++® code in Common Operations and Examples.